[AT] Good tractor day

[Dean Vinson]

Thanks very much, everyone.   I know I'm fortunate to have days like
yesterday--it was worth the wait!

Brad, the osage orange doesn't pop or spark much in normal burning, seems to
me.  But yesterday I had that big burn pile and some pretty big log
sections--maybe six or eight inches in diameter and a foot or two long--had
over the course of the day gotten buried (not completely burned) beneath the
mound of coals as I kept piling more branches on.   In the late afternoon,
after three or four rounds of throwing the ends in, the fire was down to
just that big mound of coals, and while using a garden rake to tidy it up a
bit I discovered those big un-burnt logs down underneath.   When I pulled
them up into the open air and re-shaped the mound of coals beneath them so
they could finish burning, they took off and started throwing sparks like
crazy--shooting off little embers that would literally explode in the air
and shoot off their own sparks, just like a fireworks show.   I had to step
back five or ten feet to be sure I was outside the sphere of sparks, but
after a couple of minutes they settled down to just normal burning.
Something about being so hot for so long, deprived of oxygen, but then
suddenly free to burn, I guess?

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio