It was a small start of just a few acres, but we got our autumnal burn season underway, which is our preferred burn season. It wasn’t forecast, but this morning the first patches of light frost of the season appeared on the most exposed and well insulated rooftops of SE Wisconsin buckthorn exurbia (inland from the Lake). Today’s burn was maybe a little early, but certainly preferable to not fitting this or other burns in during the dormant season or deferring burns to after the beginning of spring’s exuberance.

It was also the first burn at this particular black oak barrens for many years and possibly many decades, so it was the restoration of a process and human relationship (a good crew today) to a piece of land. Large parts are too infertile and dry to support enough vegetation to carry fire (except probably under extreme conditions), other parts are mesic and the thatch hadn’t dried enough from showers yesterday, but good sized chunks did as intended and their thin accumulation of thatch was removed by low intensity fire. The coarse stems of forbs like gray goldenrod and rough blazingstar remained upright (even the pappus of their achenes did not burn); the curly dead leaves burned away from poverty oats while leaving buds unmaligned. More of this (we hope to apply ignitions annually and let burn what will) to promote the ecesis of a healthier, more diverse community. Fire alone won’t do this. It will be helped along in a major way by removal of out of place woody species and invasive species and interseeding those species eliminated by past disturbance and which can no longer disperse to the site across the fragmented landscape.

Fire is to be a stabilizing factor, prescribed to remove smothering thatch and avoid pulses of nutrient availability in spring and summer, favoring conservative species over opportunistic ones. Management will not be diverse. It will be stable, predictable, not unlike the inevitable turning of the seasons.