I would guess it was in the 1970’s, I cannot remember just what year, but we had a 40 acre standing corn field burn. With all the wild fires we are hearing about I thought I might tell little about this October fire in dry standing corn.

I have read some news articles about fire hazards in the fall.  The years the neighbor has corn across the road in front of our house and we have corn planted to within 30 to 40 feet on three side of our house and garage I remember that fire years ago.

It was a very still day, with little or no wind and what little wind there was going cross ways to the fire blowing over into a corn field that we had harvested. A fertilizer truck had started the neighbor’s field on fire. It was before cell phone days so it took the truck driver a little while to get fire department called and before I or the man working for me knew about the fire.  Once it got into the standing corn it took less than 20 minutes to burn ¾ of the 40 acer field. Remember we had wind kind of working with us pushing fire to the side and not into the standing corn. The other thing our volunteer fire department got there almost before it got in to the standing corn.  The department had their Fire engine and I think two water trucks plus 10 to 15 guys all trying to stop the fire.  In those days we planted wheat so I had my 10 foot disk on the tractor and took it to the fire and went over to the very north side of the field between my corn and another neighbors standing corn.  I drove the tractor through the fire into standing corn ahead to get as far out front of fire as I could. The firemen had fire down under control where I drove through.  By the time I had disk down corn across the field and back making a 20 feet wide path plus fence line.  The fire was there but so was the fire engine, water truck and guys to stop the fire.   Even with just little wind pushing fire to the side we had a time or two that engine had to stop the fire as it was getting into the fence line.  The fire would have burnt miles of standing corn had there been a little wind pushing the fire into standing corn and if I would not have had little disk right close to the field.

The 100 plus bushel corn per acre we raised back then made ground covered with ears. Lot of the ears had shocks burnt off making it easy to see the ears. We had good fence back then so our cows and sows had a good food supply that winter.

As an old man my advice is, if you live with standing corn around your house harvest it first and pay the drying.

Read my book “Your-Food-My Adventure”