Fire

This is Andy with the level.  In the background is a fire up on Fisher's Peak

Well, this last week has been eventful.  Chuck and Les put in a 3" drain pipe into the bottom of our 36" trench, then back-filled everything with gravel for drainage.  That should keep our bales nice and dry.

I got a call from the bank on Tuesday that the loan committee didn't say no, but they didn't say yes either.  No one on the loan committee had ever heard of a straw bale house.  I thought that odd since there are several in this area.  The bank president proposed that we go see one of them, which I thought was really open minded of him.  He had told me that the committee wanted to just flat out say no, but he fought for us and had them half-way to a yes.  I told him that I could do better than that, I have 2 close friends with straw bale homes.  Let's go for a ride.

So we went.  I showed him and another loan officer our place, then we drove to Mike & Marlyce's house just down the road.  They were incredibly impressed.  Then we went over to Tom & Marie's house, another gorgeous home.  They took pictures and ooh'd and ah'd.  These homes are just so neat.  They both told me that they see no problem granting us the loan, but we must wait til Tuesday.  So I'll let you know when I know.

Tomorrow, Les and Chuck will be forming the footers for the house.  I'll take more pictures.  Les spent quite a bit of last week going through the trees we had to knock down.  He's got a good handle on it, and we have plenty of firewood!




The small fire in our canyon.  This fire was put out that afternoon.

Yesterday I was sitting in my chair in front of the swamp cooler I bought at a garage sale.  Les's phone rang - it sounded urgent.  He hung up and told me that one of our neighbors up on the mountain saw a fire on our property.  Lightning has been striking every afternoon.  Some days we get about 12 drops of rain.  We had one good soaker last week, but that was it.  It lasted maybe an hour.  The trees are so dry, the forest is a tinderbox ready to explode.

We ran to the car and got up the mountain as quickly as we could.  Along the way, we saw one of the volunteer firefighters sitting at the bottom of the canyon, as he didn't know which way to go.  Les told him to follow us and we sped up the canyon.  Upon getting out of the car, I ran up the white hill to the highest point of the property... the firefighter (Gabe) in close pursuit.  I was thinking to myself, "Look at that fat girl run!"  But after looking around a bit, I spotted a plume of smoke coming from further down the canyon on our neighbor's property.  Gabe called it in, "Eyes on the fire!"  Backup was called.  We kept a close eye on it while the trucks came.

Our fire department is all volunteer.  But I have nothing but great things to say about them!  Les and I went to our neighbor's house and watched with binoculars.  We saw movement down by the fire and saw through the lens that some of our neighbors were already working on the fire even before the firefighters got there.  It took a couple of hours, but they got a perimeter around it, then some water on it.  The fire chief said that they don't call the fire "out", but they're done when the fire is cold.

We looked this morning at the fire in our canyon.  No smoke.  All was quiet. The fire on Fishers Peak is still burning, but not as fiercely as before.


Fire on Fisher's Peak - still burning after 2 weeks.
 

The rain is the only thing that can help us.  There have been so many fires around here the past few weeks.  We get lightning almost every day, but only one time have we had any measurable rain.  Pray for rain!