The second spring after we moved to our 160 acres on the outskirts of town and we put up the fence, Pops brought home a “sagebrush beater.” He had borrowed it from someone. Nowadays they call it a “brush hog.” I was fascinated by the fact that it just spun chains around in a circle and beat the sagebrush apart.
After hooking it up to the Farmall M tractor and connecting the PTO, he began chipping sagebrush on the 32 acres above the house. He was easy to spot because a cloud of dust surrounded him.
I never saw anyone working in the fields, chopping wood, harvesting hay, etc., wearing more than a handkerchief over their mouth and nose. Most farmers and ranchers did not have that much protection. Dad came home in the evening completely covered in dust from fine particles of sagebrush and dirt.
As always, he was thirsty, whether he was harvesting hay, plowing, or beating mugwort. And as always, one of us children brought him a liter of water. We always watched him drink the whole liter.
I got to drive the Ford tractor and pull a rake when all the sagebrush was down. It wasn’t long before a rake basket was full. There was a seat left on the rake, but no one was sitting on it. I pulled a rope to trigger the dumping mechanism. Bob Hyer came by and took over the raking at noon. Pops dropped the sagebrush beater from the M and put the Farmhand on the M, which he used to push the little sagebrush piles I had made into piles five or six feet high or more. The field was covered with dozens of stacks of freshly chopped sagebrush. We could smell the sage all the way to the house and probably all over town.
Early the next morning, Pops and I began burning the sagebrush piles. We stopped at the edge of the field. Pops and I stood there for a while. He threw a handful of dried grass in the air and explained that we needed to know which way the wind was blowing. As I recall, there was hardly any wind, and after a few minutes, Pops showed us the route we would follow. I watched as he poured a soup can of kerosene on the bottom of a pile and lit it. Once the pile was burning well, he poked it with his pitchfork and pulled out a pile of burning sagebrush. He went to the next pile and stuck the burning brush on the bottom of that pile.
I had a bundle fork, a smaller, three-pronged pitchfork. He had me pull out a forkful of burning sage. I carried it with the fork to my right, like Pops had told me to do as we lit the next pile.
Pops said, “Let’s go.” He took a forkful of the pile I had made and walked along one side of the field. I went where he pointed and made another pile.
Before noon we had everything burning. We watched as one or another pile that we thought would burn well began to smoke or went out. When that happened I would get fuel from the next pile and relight the one that had not burned. I got tired and started carrying the bundle fork over my right shoulder.
Bob Hyer showed up with a water tank and hand pump in the back of his pickup truck just as we were starting to set the fires. He was busy watching for flying embers and putting them out. Once we had all the embers lit, Pops joined him.
Almost every pile was burned by early afternoon. We watched until late evening. Bob and Pops drove around and soaked everything while I carried fire to unburned sagebrush. I had a great time.
When it was quiet, we went into the house for dinner. Mama noticed that the hair on the back of my head and above my ears was red, curly, and almost completely gone. The burning sage over my shoulder had singed all the hair on my head that was not covered by my hat.
Pops and Bob spent all night looking for hotspots, but I went to bed.
RIDE EASY, PARDS…..Vic
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