When we bought this place we found a huge slash pile on the hillside. Our neighbors have told us short stories of what has occurred on this property in the past and what I have gathered is that the last person to work the land here was trying to grow ginseng. By putting together all of the different stories and clues found around the property, that person was a small Laotian man who, with his family, was growing ginseng under the canopy of eucalyptus (I do not know anything about ginseng so I guess I will have to read about it soon). As he planted all of these trees, one at a time, he would lug two 5 gallon buckets of mulch to place around each tree. The neighbors would become weary just from watching this tiny man who, because of his slight stature could not carry the buckets high enough to clear the rough ground. Yet he still managed to move two dump truck loads of woodchips 5 gallons at a time. Now with a grove of fast growing eucalyptus the Farmer could plant ginseng in the shade of these aromatic trees. I assume that the climate here is not appropriate for growing ginseng and his crop failed. Before the property went up for sale, this farmer cut down all of the eucalyptus trees and removed some of the stumps and piled them in one huge slash pile. This was about two acres of trees 12 inches or more in diameter and it looks as if he did most of the clearing with an axe and hand saw.
As we started burning this pile in the spring we uncovered a basketball rim, bicycle, garage door parts, tin roofing, the hood of a Buick and the kitchen sink. We would burn small bits at a time for fear of catching the whole valley on fire (Apparently Anna's ancestors were kicked out of Sweden for catching their town on fire doing a similar chore and we did not want the same thing to happen to us). Our neighbors would watch us burn the pile creating smoke each Saturday and Sunday morning. We wondered how much this troublesome smoke bothered them for we had not yet met any of them and wanted to have good relationships with our neighbors. We finally met the neighbors and found out that they were not at all bothered by the smoke and encouraged us to light of the whole pile at once. Anna's father reminded us of their ancestors so we took the prudent approach and continued to burn small piles until the burn ban started in June. This summer I was able to plow all around the slash pile which created a nice buffer from the dry vegetation in the valley.
The burn ban was recently lifted and our neighbor Andy was excited for us. He was so excited that he brought over his small tractor and with both of our machines we pushed the pile down the hill into the middle of a plowed area. The truth be told, Andy and his tractor did most of the work, he is really good on a tractor from his years of dairy farming up the valley. In the plowed field we could safely burn the pile without catching grass on fire or roasting our laying hens in the nearby coop.
The above pictures are of Andy and I working the burn pile.
