Prairie fire

Last Friday I joined Alma in school for her nursery rhyme recital. Honestly the highlight for me was to play chicken and fox in the gym. Have I mentioned that she has gym and music class everyday in Clinton Elementary. She did not have that in St. Paul (but hey! don't tell anyone because they might take it away-- are kids suppose to have gym and music anymore??). Back to chicken and fox-- teams of 2, me and Alma, hoola hoops with wiffle balls to guard (the chicken) while the other person runs around trying to steal other people's "eggs." Oooooo what fun. I asked if we could play dodge ball and was informed by the teacher that wasn't allowed (do the Chicken Little dodge ball dance here).

As we turned to drive east out of townafter school I could see a big smoke rising up into the air. It was to the east and slightly south. Exactly the direction of our farm. But our farm is about 11 miles away-- could that be from our farm? You see we had a little fire here a few days before what with cutting up metal in the dry grass. Luckily someone was farming near by and plowed a patch that stopped the fire.

Sure enough I'm driving closer and closer and the billowing smoke is aligning with the coordinates of our farm. I turn down our road and all I see is a pink wall of smoke. The fire is on the west of our gravel road and strips have been plowed on the western edge of our fields that would keep it from jumping over the gravel. I'm not sure if I should drive into the wall of smoke. So I stopped to take pictures. The fires didn't cross into our section and the crops were harvested across the road so that the crops weren't lost and didn't fuel an inferno.

There have been a few dramatic fires around here lately. I'm not sure if they are planned or accidents-- like ours was.