Fire...

These are the words we all hate to hear, but we heard them today. Rick needed me to flag ahead of the swather, so off we went down the Whitlash Road. He was to swath two rounds, then I was to flag for him coming back home. He had barely made one round (and I had barely read 2 chapters) when he shut down the swather, climbed into the pickup, and we raced over the county to get to the fire. To get a perspective, imagine going across Rhode Island to get to the fire...that would be an idea of what it was like...but I don't think you would have seen the fire as we did.



As we drove from the Whitlash Road to the Lothair Road, we found many other farmers headed towards the fire or towards water trucks. As harvest is upon us, we are not far from our filled tanks on the trucks. (This fire was started when a combine hit a rock...and the combine was by the Galata Road.)



About this time, we (Hubby and little ol' me) realized...we have no shovels! But Jake, who we had picked up down the road, had been told there was a water truck on the south side of this smoke/flames.



We headed for the truck, but found the flames were aching to jump the road...but as there was a loaded truck just a few miles on the other side...we went around on the left of the flames. We couldn't see much, but we were blessed with having no one ahead of us as we drove through the dense smoke.



Once on the other side, the blackness of the prairie spread for miles...and then the wind changed. Yes, blessings were everywhere.



Rick hopped on with another truck; I stayed with the pickup and stomped out smoldering cow pies; and Mark, Justin, Garrett, and Rick helped drown out the smoldering sage brush.



It was Garrett's (and my) first fire experience...I'll have to get his story written down also, but it sounds as if Mark, Justin, and Garrett were playing with the same wall of fire.

There were fire units there from Sunburst, Shelby, Chester, Eagle Creek, and all the farmers in the area. This is truly a wonderful place to live.