Photo Diary of Prescribed Fire (or Controlled Burn) to Restore Longleaf Pine and Wiregrass in North Florida sandhills.
February 2017
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Not much to say about the annual controlled burning of the North Florida woods. When travelling from Tallahassee to Pensacola weekend before, it was smoke in the air all the way there and back. National Forests, State Forests, Air Force bases, and private landowners -- all get into the season of fire. I’ve posted buckets before with more background here and then last year at Spring Canyon.
Sunday we were in western Gadsden County for Billy and Marcia and their restoration efforts. It had not been burned since March 2014 so on the edges, the transition from pine to hardwood, the encroaching hardwood that fire will keep out, it needed some brush-cutting first. The rest had ample fuel from needles, wiregrass, broomsedge, and weeds.
Here's an old satellite view from that time. The 2 gray-brown areas, left and right, are sandhills that are being restored. The browner center is mowed and planted with wildflowers; friends have honeybee hives there too. Neighbors are along the road and what we didn't want to burn into. All the rest of the greenery is hardwood forest sloping off into seasonal streams and Crooked Creek which flows from the southeast to the northwest (bottom left.) This is the same creek that comes out of Spring Canyon that I talk of so often, Ms. Helen's place, and now farther upstream, Jack and Annie's 300 acres that is being restored from planted Sand Pine recently harvested.
Jack, our Burn Boss for the day, came over from The Nature Conservancy land to the southwest along the Apalachicola River with some of his burn crew. T'was great to have the knowledgable and experienced help. After a planning meeting and reading of weather conditions, a "test burn" was conducted on the south end of the east section. Success! and they were off, 1 going along the firelane to the left and 1 to the right. Using drip torches with a kerosene mixture, they'd start a continous fire for 30-40 feet. Then stop and drip a line 20' in and come back to the edge and continue along the lane. It goes fast. We were there in the fire lane to keep fires from crossing into woods. Flareups are very hot.
15 minutes later it looks like this.
Wiregrass is an essential part of this environment. It evolved to burn with the pines and others plants. Way cool to watch a clump burn off and know in a few days it will be erupting with green.
And here we are at the top of the east section an hour later, full ignition as Jack says. After this was a short break, wait for the smoke to clear, and then off to check the edges.
Just to prove a point, Jack started this little fire down at the bottom to show how slow it burns in the woods. The day got a lot longer when some of these woodsy fires reached a bit father than intended.
Lunch and then we start the west section. This one was a bit trickier with more underbrush, large Magnolias and a circle of wet woods center.
This fire had to be put out when the wind shifted and it moved north toward the neighbors. We clear a line thru the leaf litter with hand rakes in front of the direction it’s going and then watch it die out.
And towards sunset we spent a lot of time on this snag. Marcia was saddened to see this "cat-face" Longleaf burn. It was a relic of the turpentine days when a pine was scarred and sheet metal attached to funnel the pitch into a clay pot. Nasty business and probably one of the worst jobs ever. Jack did come by later with his ATV and water tank to put it out. Downside was the small Torreya tree that got torched. Billy and Marcia have several remnants of these ancient trees that died off from disease decades ago, only occasional sprouts remain.
Here is most the crew watching a small piece Marcia wanted burned. They have a large colony of Calamint growing in there and hopefully, with the grasses burned off, it spreads. Note the beehives to the right rear.
Well that's it for this bucket. Thanks for reading and if you have questions or items to note of happenings in your backyard -- see ya in the comments!
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