Thursday, January 15: with the help of one of the scouts from our Ward, we cut some more elderberry brush and stack it with previous cuttings to be burned. We talk about whether it is wet enough that the soil won't "take light" and decide it is and light the fire. We tend it for over an hour and leave a few small sticks to finish burning.
Thursday, January 22: we are out at camp to work on another project there and luckily happen onto our old fire which is now still smoking just a little and to our horror we see that there is a six foot diameter depression a foot deep where the fire has been burning for a week! We have set the fen on fire!! This is peat soil and it burns and you don't put it out by throwing dirt on the fire - that's fuel you dummy!
We go directly to our wonderful neighbor next door, Ray Dowe, who has lived in the fens all his life. He will know just how to giggle at us! and to help us know what to do next. Ray and Jack go out to camp where a full confession is made and accepted. Ray begins digging test holes around the fire a foot beyond the edge of the pit looking for smoke, or heat. It is determined that it has moved underground only a few inches so far. It is late dusk and we decide to wait until the next day and bring out the big water tank.
Friday, January 23: It take almost two hours to fill the "bowser". By 2:00 PM we have started drowning the fire. We fill the pit 5 times in a half hour and dig around it some more. Jack is amazed to see and learn that the soil is bone dry just a few inches down from the surface. It is not only dry but dry and powdery. There is so much peat in it that it smolders without effort. While they work, Ray tells stories about other fen fires. He has seen a case where the fire has burned out a great hollow underground and the front end of his tractor caved into the smoldering pit.
A few hours later the Farm Manager shows up and tells about his first job on a local farm many years ago. He and another bloke were hired to burn the stubble off a wheat field. "It took us a couple hours to start the fire and a couple weeks to put it out.", he says. They would go out well before dawn and find the spots that were still glowing after the efforts of the previous day.
Saturday, January 24: Jack finishes flooding the fire with the last of the water in the bowser. We will need to go back in a week and probe the ground all around to assure ourselves that it is all cold. Even though we poured a thousand gallons into the pit, the water drained quickly away and might not have gone sideways enough to drown all the glowing embers. Here is Ray surveying the hopefully fully drowned fen fire. Notice the large, black mole hills all over our otherwise beautiful camp playing field. There are a bunch of moles just waiting for us. Maybe we could "burn 'em out"? Not.
Actually, we think this is a very dangerous place to live in the last days. If the Lord is going to burn the earth He will probably start the fire here where it's easy to light!!!
