Confessions from the Grassland
We live in a grassland/oak savannah prone to devastating fires, like most of the West. I have family members who have lost everything in fires. I am scared of fires. However, I am not willing to live in an environment which is completely fire safe. That would entail concrete or gravel 100 feet around my home. There are new laws now in CA that the clearance around your home must be 100 feet. I don't dispute that this will stop fires or slow them down. I also don't dispute that this 100 feet clearance will make fighting fires much much easier for the brave men and women who are fire fighters. I simply don't choose to live the most safe. I am actively planting trees within this 100 foot area which in essence is increasing the fire load. This is after all sector 1, encroaching on sector 2. The key as I see it, is to keep this area trimmed of dead stuff, and well irrigated. I can't always let things go to seed and get all mangy even if it does help out the birds and insects.
This year we got cited by CDF for failure to keep our grass low enough around out- buildings. This was sadly true. I have no excuse; we didn't mow enough. But just yesterday I got my scythe in the mail!! And now I can mow and then Stephen can weed whack and the whole thing will be much easier. Since we do not have a tractor with a mower attachment (or a tractor for that matter) mowing this time of year is very tricky. We bought my scythe through https://scythesupply.com/. I say "my" scythe because this scythe was made based upon my measurements. So no one can us it but me... well not super efficiently anyway. Unless you have freakishly short arms like I do and are the same height. This company was knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. Scythe's intimidate me. There is so much jargon. But they helped me pick a blade based upon my needs. In case you are interested I got the 24 inch Ditch blade with a Maine ash snath.
So here are the pics of "after" we did our best to comply. Hope they think so too.
Just as an aside. We do have an eight foot wrap around porch which IS concrete and would stop or slow a fire. Our house does not touch bare earth so in that way we are more fire safe than most houses and we do have a metal roof.
This year we got cited by CDF for failure to keep our grass low enough around out- buildings. This was sadly true. I have no excuse; we didn't mow enough. But just yesterday I got my scythe in the mail!! And now I can mow and then Stephen can weed whack and the whole thing will be much easier. Since we do not have a tractor with a mower attachment (or a tractor for that matter) mowing this time of year is very tricky. We bought my scythe through https://scythesupply.com/. I say "my" scythe because this scythe was made based upon my measurements. So no one can us it but me... well not super efficiently anyway. Unless you have freakishly short arms like I do and are the same height. This company was knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. Scythe's intimidate me. There is so much jargon. But they helped me pick a blade based upon my needs. In case you are interested I got the 24 inch Ditch blade with a Maine ash snath.
So here are the pics of "after" we did our best to comply. Hope they think so too.
Just as an aside. We do have an eight foot wrap around porch which IS concrete and would stop or slow a fire. Our house does not touch bare earth so in that way we are more fire safe than most houses and we do have a metal roof.
who is this that "cited" you? Did they come onto your land and inspect it? With advance notice and permission? Our place is fenced, gated, and posted. It's on a fairly busy road, and the CalFire station is only a mile or so away and the truck goes up and down several times a week (wonder why?) We did scythe and mow, but there are numerous piles of cut, dry starthistle all over, and the original garden is still unmown (I was trying to engineer a competition between starthistle and bermudagrass, hoping to weaken the bermuda before sheetmulching.....) So I imagine someone could find some reason to say we are not complying with some regulation or other, but nobody seems to have noticed...yet...
ReplyDeleteCalifornia Department of Forestry were checking all the properties in our development. We have CDF personnel that live here so we think they might have encouraged it. Some people have locked gates as well. They cited us with a warning. We asked what would happen if we didn't "take it to dirt" as they wanted around shrubs and trees. They said we would be fined. So we tried our best and waited. They have not returned as far as we know. The fines are pretty stiff. SO many people would be in violation if they enforced all of CA's new fire codes. It's just a question of if they get you on their radar or if you have huge violations they can't ignore.
ReplyDelete