Cloud Making

Yes that's, yesterday I was actually making clouds.. more on that later (including photographic evidence).

This post is for yesterdays activities which started out early in the morning to prepare for burning off again. I ran the prickle chain over a couple of paddocks, one I burnt yesterday - that was to stimulate any weed seeds that may have survived the burn so they might germinate and be sprayed out later. The second paddock chained was one I planned to burn, and that was to "fluff" up the grass on there so it would burn better. I used the John Deere 4440 with the prickle chain, and here's a couple of photos taken out the back window of the tractor while I was going along.

The afternoons task was to make clouds.. oh sorry I mean burn off the two paddocks I needed to. To avoid burning the trees to the ground I needed to backburn up to and then around the tree carefully first. Here's one of the boys working hard at backburning.

He's dragging a rake with burning grass. The paddock is completely on fire. This is the view from behind the fire. I laid one row of fire with the fire stick behind the ute and the wind carries it across the rest of the paddock.

Now for the cloud making. As the smoke rises up into the air you start to notice clouds forming. I guess the conditions have to be right, and I'm sure there's a complex scientific explanation for it all, but it's just interesting to watch. Here's a few pictures of my cloud (petty I couldn't work out how to make that cloud rain as well).