Selfsufficientish.com

Smokey fire means one of two things and possible both.

1. your fire wanst open enough - too compact and didnt get enough air so didnt burn well and fast

2. you wood and such was too wet and wont damn well burn no matter HOW much paper/kero etc is used.

find the B******s and give em hell MMM! of if ur feeling polite you could always giv em some advice i guess, but that not as fun

I had my bonfires in Feb, when the weather was a bit nicer than it is now (snowing again ))

I light mine on the veg garden, and have a large open fire rather than a small contained one, that way the ground beneath does not get too baked.
I then rotavate a couple of days later and spread the pot ash around. I am only burning cardboard, and garden waste, branches and brambles. Don't burn anything else if you want to have the fire on the veg plot.

Start small and get a hot fire going then you can add 'green' branches and freshly cut brambles and the like, and rake the centre of the fire out so that you are covering a bigger area with hot ash. This prevents those intense hot ash fires, that can flare up again 2 or 3 days later if the wind catches the hot embers. Not something that you want to happen when you are not around keeping an eye on it.

Bonfire is the way to go to get rid of the prunings as well as providing potash for use afterwards. If you can burn and spread where you intend to plant potatoes - they especially love it, and it helps to kill off any residual nasties in the earth too.

Monika

frozenthunderbolt wrote:Smokey fire means one of two things and possible both.

1. your fire wanst open enough - too compact and didnt get enough air so didnt burn well and fast

2. you wood and such was too wet and wont damn well burn no matter HOW much paper/kero etc is used.

find the B******s and give em hell MMM! of if ur feeling polite you could always giv em some advice i guess, but that not as fun

It was a bonfire! Around here all of February and part of March is tree chopping time of the year - obviously the farmers decided to burn the smaller stuff that's no good for firewood - so burning green wood. Must have been a hell of a bonfire though to cause so much smoke over such a large area.

On the plus side once they start their tree chopping the hunting season stops abruptly, thank the lord for small mercies. Personally I'd rather hear the sound of incessant chainsaws to rifle shots, dogs barking, horns tooting and general yahooing of drunken hunters, who care not one jot about livestock, horses, or pets and just run around shooting blindly at anything that moves! The good thing is that they quite often shoot each other!