Oh Deer..!!! The Burn, the Fire….and the people who come to the rescue..!!

That time of year is upon us…as we ready ourselves once more to get out on the road for another season of adventuring, it’s time to tell the tales of the happenings and mishappenings of the winter season.

It all begins with the journey home from the Patricia Rodeo……we rarely drive in the dark…..but …we decided to head for home after the final evening of the rodeo….classic story…about a km from home, 10pm and dark……a doe leapt out from behind a tree line and took out both doors and the box on the passenger side of the truck. ( didn’t go well for her either ). Thankfully the trailer was spared….no drive damage to the truck….but it did curtail any further travel plans for 2025.

I do have pictures …but probably best not to post them (gruesome..!!)

With travelling done…attention redirected to the filling of the pit……

The old pit was backfilled in May…and a new pit took its place, more conveniently placed for the next section of the pile to be cleared.

The work continued…..Scott does love to pull out those giant beams….

….and it becomes the little tractor that could….lol……

The weather held long enough for us to get the it about 2/3rds full….

…and then Canadian Thanksgiving weekend brought early snow cover….and with snow….we get to have a burn permit…..so burn we did.

We had to retreat to the top of the dirt pile pretty soon after the flames took……it gets warm …fast…..

Very quickly it engulfs the entire pit….

Then the kid arrived in her truck……first time at the burn, she was only there a few minutes before realising how hot it was….so her pretty red truck got moved away to a safer spot….

…and time for a beer….

As impressive as that hungry inferno is…..at night time it takes on an other-worldly persona….

The whole thing was hot…and fast, it was quicker than the previous burns to stop smoking….so 6 weeks later with some milder weather we thought we could take advantage and fill again….

Monday morning I checked out the progress…..a good amount in there for a couple of days work on the weekend…….the weather that day was brutal…110 kmph winds straight from the west. By lunchtime there was smoke coming from the pit……we went to check……not good…five minutes later there were flames and it jumped out the pit and galloped across the field towards the pile…..

Fortunately we are less than 5km from the firehall…and the firetrucks responded in under 5 minutes.

They caught that sucker just in time…..it had just…only just reached the edge of the pile…..

So this is our local fire department…

Having successfully dowsed the escaped flames….the pit got a thourough soaking….

Many, many thanks to our volunteer fire and rescue squad.

An exciting day for sure…….well aware how fortunate we were that it was caught early and that great team of volunteers got to us as quickly as they did.

Next day for us……in the hole with the rakes pulling all the still smoldering ash down off the walls into the base of the pit…….no repeat performance required….!!!

Also left us a little gun shy on putting any more in the pit….for now….

So to the more regular…..less dramatic winter stuff……..with our usual visitors

…and early deep drifting snow where the route out was by snowshoe…

…we had the Christmas market….

…and the ongoing renovations on our primary bedroom……

…with a couple more reclaimed explosion proof lights from the grain elevator debris. Scott spent the time cleaning them up and finding the perfect fairy light bulbs to show them off…..lol