It was pretty mild when I came out to do my rounds this morning.

The older cats really prefer to eat kibble on the cat house roof, even in the snow!

Also, once it was pointed out to me, I just can’t unsee the fact that Caramel is plaid.

Also, also… I counted 30 this morning.

When I was done my rounds, I decided to stay out and get a weather dependent job done. There was no breeze at all, and snow on the ground, which meant it was safe to burn a branch pile.

When the big branch pile was chipped and cleaned up, they left a pile of debris that could not be chipped. While preparing branches for the wattle weave raised be, we added quite a lot of small, green branches to it. The conditions that made it safe to do a bonfire like this also made it hard to keep a fire going – especially with all those green branches – so I took advantage of the situation and started bringing over branches from the pile by the garage that was too decomposed to chip. Those have been sitting there for years, so the fire really got going once they caught!

I was even able to rake up most of the debris. I know there’s still some left, but I won’t be able to dig those out until spring.

By the time I was finishing up this pile, it had started to snow, but that didn’t last long.

Once that was raked up, I also raked up the path of twigs that got dropped along the way. 😁

After about three hours, I banked the fire by raking up more debris and soil. It should continue to smolder for some time, but should not flame up. Even if it does, there’s a large ring of bare soil around it, and beyond that, any grass and the other pile of wood that needs to be burned are far enough away and have enough snow on them that they are not at risk.

I’m glad to finally get this done.

Next is the logs the chippers set aside that I stacked around some garbage that was too much for the burn barrel.

That’s going to be quite the bonfire when we finally get around to it!

The Re-Farmer