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Ted's Burn

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On Tuesday, March 25 th the SFM PBA helped me successfully execute a 20-acre prescribed woodland burn on my property.  We tuned the ignition plan to accommodate winds from the northwest with anticipated gusts of up to 25 mph.  Ignition started on the north side with Team A advancing east and then south while Team B ignited the western side of the burn. To ensure that the eastern and southern edges were completely blackened before the wind-driven head fire advanced from the west, Team A always stayed one checkpoint ahead of Team B. The north, east and southern edges were all blackened before the steep gully on the Southwest side was ignited. Apart from the northern food plot and the woods immediately northeast of it, the unit was completely burned. In those areas short green grass and a lack of continuous leaf litter prevented the fire from carrying. The lower food plot burned particularly well. Note: all vegetation in both fields will be killed with herbicides in advance of p...
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Jeff's Burn

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Memo: Saturday, 3/22/25 Regarding: Jeff Roderick’s Burn at 300 Thomas Road, Farmington, MO 63640 The SFM-PBA successfully completed the organization's fourth successful burn today!   The burn site was prepared beginning in late February, with final preparations completed the day before and morning of the burn.  Preparations included: Blowing out all fire lines. Cutting snags. Scattering and burning piles of cut trees. Flagging the site including labeling ignition, ending and reference points per the burn plan. Staging of equipment including 5-back pack sprayers, 6-drip torches 1-chain saw, 6-4 gallon buckets of water, 1-40 gallon UTV sprayer. Fueling and testing all equipment. SFM-PBA burn team: Cody, Byron, Ted, Dennis, Travis, Russell, Shannon, Christine, John, Traci, Jeff. Guests: Sue Roderick and Allison Bowman East MDC trainer: Jan Dellamano PHC Retired 9:00 am A safety and pre-burn planning meeting was conducted by Jeff.  Teams and roles were assigned: Green Team Co...
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Location: 300 Thomas Rd, Farmington, MO 63640, USA
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Russell's Burn

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Today the SFM-PBA completed our first burn executed with only PBA members and PBA equipment. We were very aware of the possibility of gusts today and changed our plan of attack accordingly. We burned 11 acres with a >97% burn coverage in just about 4 hours. The reason it took this long is because we backfired the area using EW strips advancing into a NNW wind with steady speeds of 5-7mph and occasional gusts to 11mph. In order to minimize the risk of gusts blowing embers across our eastern fire line we kept the length of active fire along the eastern edge very short. The biggest excitement of the day was when the dead end of a 6-inch diameter oak limb 15-20 off the ground burst into flames. The limb was inside the burn unit but adjacent to our vulnerable eastern edge. Our water spray unit was able to reach the branch and extinguish the fire but if it had been 5 feet higher, it could have been a different story.  It was a serious reminder that all it takes is o...
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