Remember the fire we had last year - a haystack fire....well, we once again tried to burn ourselves down the other day. About a week ago Stan (Ryan's dad) sent his hired hand Nick and Ry's little brother Dale up to burn one of our ditches. This is a ditch Ryan has NEVER burned because of it location to the haystacks and houses....but I guess no one gave these two boys that memo and Ryan didn't know Stan had sent them. They knew the ditch was right next to the haystack so they had fire extinguishers in hand and kept it nice and small. It started out okay...and once they got past the haystacks they thought they were doing good. Right next to our haystacks is some giant grain bins and if you have ever stood between two grain bins you know that it kind of creates a vacuum effect with the wind. So the fire is creeping along and when it gets to where the grain bins stand that gust of wind hits it and in minutes we had an emergency!!
The ditch follows a bend and runs along our pasture that is next to our house. You can tell in the picture that the pasture is full of long, tall dead grass, weeds and leaves. It also has alot of big tall dead trees too. The fire caught them in an instant. I was outside making mud pies with Laiklie in the fort when the flames started reaching for the sky right up at the tops of the trees and Dale yelled to me to get the hoses. I left Laiklie with the kids that had just walked off the bus as Dale yelled and ran for the water. I was dragging hoses out of the well house (we haven't had to use them yet this spring) and as I looked up there was Chase - Ryan's other brother. I knew that he was there as a tender mercy of the Lord! Chase and I worked like crazy to get the hoses over to the fire that was headed right for mine and the neighbors house.
After I got Chase started with those hoses I called Ryan looking for the other hoses and told him he better get up here quick because they were trying to burn us down. Dale yelled at me to call and get more help. So I called the shop and not too long after Sid and Brad showed up. We got the water to Dale just in time for he and Chase to get the fire headed for both houses under control. If you look in this picture most of the trees in it ended up burning and the entire fence in the back ground. You can also see the haystack and the naughty grain bins that started the mess off to the right. Also...Nick is in the picture. We teased him about trying to burn our house down. He felt bad. I kept asking if his wife was even going to let him come home because he was seriously black from smoke.
Just after we got the fire under control on one end we looked over and the fire had started up again by the haystacks. We didn't have a source of water over there, so Ryan, Nick, Sid, Brad and I ran over there with shovels in hand to put it out. We have a very similar pasture back there with the long tall grass and more haystacks and we knew we could have a disaster within minutes. We dug fire lines, and beat the fire out with our shovels. It was SO HOT it would seriously burn you if you even got close enough to beat it out. We did finally get it stopped there too!!
In order to keep the fire that had started in the trees under control they got out the chain saw and started knocking down dead trees. These two, Dale in white and Ry in yellow TERRIFY me! At one point Dale (who has NO FEAR!) climbed up on the BURNING fence with the chain saw in hand to cut down a huge tree trunk they were worried would catch fire and land in the dry weeds. I could hardly watch them! The fire burned ALL NIGHT LONG! I couldn't sleep because I was worried that at any point the wind could come up and blow ashes into those tall dry weeds and we would be off fighting fire again! My house stunk, my cars stunk, the next morning we got up early for baptisms for the dead with the youth in our ward and my bra even stunk! :) I am so grateful that the Lord has his hand in our life! We were watched over and blessed this day for sure!
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