I’ve been outside for probably nearly 2 hours monitoring and putting out a fire.

I had a guy and his wife come here today to cut up fallen branches and he lopped a dead tree too. He offered to burn off some of the wood and said he does it all the time – he has many clients in this area so I said that’s ok, as long as he knew what to do, because I don’t. He said he did – he’s grown up in the country and had done it heaps.

An hour before he was due to leave he told me I’d have to monitor it until it went out so I told him to stop feeding it with more branches. I had no idea I was going to have to be outside to monitor a fire – that was not my plan for this afternoon.  I told him I was supposed to be going out and can he put it out before he goes.

He said he couldn’t put it out unless I had enough hoses to get to where the second fire was.  So I had to ring a hardware store to buy up more hoses (we needed an 80 mtr (about 260 ft) length to get to where the burn-off is) and then I had to ring hubby to find out about fittings and things – do you think he was happy? NOT!

By the time I’d finished on the phone and had checked our garage re hoses and then gone out to pass on messages, and stuff, it was time for this guy to go and the fire hadn’t been put out yet.

So I had to go to the hardware place after he had left with one fire smouldering and the other still burning. He said we could just leave them smouldering and check them in the morning. What???!!! No way, I wouldn’t sleep tonight knowing there was a fire smouldering outside, even if it is damp and foggy up here overnight and winter has begun.

So now I’ve got one fully out and the other is still smouldering but the steam and smoke has gotten a lot smaller. I have to keep going out to check it.

The joys of living in a country and not having done a burn-off before. Hubby was planning to do our first one sometime but he’s been beaten to it…