The Spring Cleaning Brigade

If the sun happens to come out during the final days of March, you will almost always find me outside with a pile of winter tree detritus burning and a rake in my hand.

I'm actually quite curious if some wayward creature is going to plop through here and lecture me about the evils of burning wood's waste like has happened in years past. It's one of my favorite spring happenings! In North Idaho you either burn the wood's duff now or you burn up completely later. I don't know about you, but I don't mind a bit of raking and burning compared to my entire farm becoming an inferno due to improper land stewardship.

And now I shall hop off my soapbox.

(Also, I do compost and use my pine needles for mulch, but I have twenty acres to care for, so you know, burning is going to happen in the spring and fall because trees are like toddlers in that they leave artifacts all over the place.)

They are always lurking, there are two of them in this picture...

Okay, moving on. This morning after the hubs and the boy drove off to shotgun practice, I looked out the window as I finished my cocoa coffee and immediately knew I was going to go burn the little pile by the hub's charcoal barrel. The Ponderosa pines around my shop and storage shed have been very plentiful in their droppings this winter, so I thought I would get all that raked up.

My first order of business was to go get the wheelbarrow from the barn. It was full of chicken litter from the hen's pen. I had left it in the barn full of poo because I wanted it to not get all soggy in the deluge that was to happen while I was gone last week in Vegas. I rolled that wheelbarrow over the rhubarb by the hoop house and dumped it out there for future use. I am sure the rhubarb is happy about it being there too.

I then spent the next half hour dancing around the yard to some quality tunes and picking up all the sizeable sticks and branches that broke off the trees during the winter. I have my lawnmower yard vacuum that works amazingly as picking up needles and small sticks, but before I crank that baby up I have to pick up the big stuff by hand.

And no work day is complete without my contingent of feline and canine management in tow. They are always lurking. Although I must admit, the giant black beastie Jojo provided a ton of humorous moments by getting multiple cases of the zoomies and falling dramatically off of the sawhorse on the side of the driveway in a completely derptastic performance that only a floofy cat could do.

The dogs were in a more sedate mood, other than Cora trying to bite the rake every time I swiped it across the ground. Lani was in a more pensive and enjoying the sun state, although she too made me laugh as she did a bunch of what I call Flabbinsing across the ground, wriggling on her back in the grass in the sun.

After four hours straight of raking, loading, wheelbarrowing, and burning, I discovered that I had earned my first blisters of the spring. I'm also more than slightly fatigued and smell like camping. It's time for a shower, cozy comfy clothes, and a sedate viewing of some Miss Marple.

You know, a bit of rest, because I've got a lot ahead of me for the next several weeks.

Plus, more raking 😉

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's slightly burnt pine-scented iPhone

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