It happened again!  We had a huge fire on Tuesday, two miles long.  The fire wiped out everything on the west side of the farm, except Mom-mom’s house, barn, and other outbuildings.  The firemen were able to stop the fire five feet from all of the structures.

We were all scared!

Boomer and I stayed right with Mom.  We rode on the back of the four-wheeler and never left it.  (Boomer is really bad about jumping off and heading out to see what there is to see when Mom gets off.  He always gets in trouble, but he just gives all of us a Beagle smile and does it again. But this time he listened.)  The smoke and the flames were horrible.

The cows all circled up, with the baby calves in the middle, just like the books say they do when there is danger.  The cowboys came up and stayed with them just to be sure.

At several points the fire jumped into the hay fields and the corn fields rushing right over to toward Mom, Dad, Boomer and my house.  It was frightening.  But just the day before Dad had disked all the ends by the gated pipe and the road to our place.  That’s what stopped the fire there, not the firemen.

The very next day, Wednesday, the Uncompahgre Ditch Company sent the ditch cleaners down to clean out the canal to ready it for the water next week.

Dad talked to the guys said he had a very huge fire yesterday and would they be extra careful, they said they would and took off.

They didn’t!

They swooshed their 8” propane weed burner and burned everything in sight, even burned up our over 100-year-old cottonwood tree, that made Mom cry.  Mom and Dad saw the guy swirl the burner around the base of the tree.

Mom, Boom and I, Mom-mom and Talley hauled water to the tree for most of the afternoon, but it finally burst into flames and left this earth.  Mom told all of us that she felt like she lost a very good friend that day.

Now the whole north side and the whole east side of the farm have the fences burned to the ground.

What a mess!

Dad has been busy, getting the fire report, talking to the neighbor about repairs, and getting the ditch company to fix the fences.

Mom says her digital camera is a blessing.

Since one of the very long time ditch companies board member is our neighbor to the north, (by two miles) and we get up before the sun shines, by 6:30 in the morning, Thursday, Dad and board member were touring the damage the ditch company did.

The tree fell over around 8:30 Thursday morning.  The Ditch company people wanted it to burn up so they didn’t have very much to clean up.  (They made the mess, they clean it up, Dad says.  The board member and the manager of the company agreed)

They also agreed to the repair of all the fences on the north and east side of the farm.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon the tree eased itself into the canal where it continued to burn.

8:30 that night the fire trucks were back out to our place, as someone passing by saw the burning tree for the first time and called it in to the fire department.

The ditch company, which hoped that they wouldn’t have much to do, vanished in several streams of water after the fire department got here.

So this is where we are, the day after the Ides of March. Hopefully we are on our way to mending.

At least the west side fences are still standing.

Knock on wood!

Fuzzy