Ep. 344 How and When To Burn Your Prairie Fields From The Man Who Has Burned 100,000 Acres
Ray Geroff is a district heritage biologist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and has torched more than 100,000 acres of native prairie across his career. He burned 3,900 of them the day before this recording. In Episode 344 of the Prairie Farm Podcast, Kent and Nicolas sit down with Ray to cover everything from weather windows and proper burn conditions to seasonal timing across all four seasons, burn break construction, invasive species management with fire, including his six-year sericea protocol, and what happens when a prairie goes without fire. Essential listening for any landowner managing native ground.
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Nicolas Lirio (00:00.27)
We are rocking and rolling on this side. Ken, anything before?
Ray Geroff (00:08.031)
I guess I get...
Kent Boucher (00:11.96)
Good call.
Nicolas Lirio (00:15.788)
I take my sweater off but I'm afraid my moobs will show. I have a moob showing shirt on. I've been there.
Kent Boucher (00:28.43)
Yeah, one of the hardest I've ever laughed with Nicholas, which has been many times. I just started working at Hoxie and we have this old F450 Super Duty that's got air ride on it. It's an old ambulance truck. It's got a flat. No, I go up to five because I'm always so quiet on the pod.
Nicolas Lirio (00:48.982)
I think it's because you've got it below you. But if you go up to five, then we get a little bit of my echo because I'm so freaking loud.
Kent Boucher (00:55.606)
Alright, I'll try it.
Nicolas Lirio (00:57.774)
You're so kind.
Ray Geroff (00:59.406)
There you go.
Kent Boucher (01:00.258)
But we didn't, I didn't know how to run the air ride on that truck. I'd never been shown and Nick didn't know, because he's Nick. And so we're driving through the field and that thing with no suspension is unbelievable. I mean, your eyes like start doing like.
Ray Geroff (01:19.703)
Slot me.
Nicolas Lirio (01:20.448)
It's like a trampoline. It's it's got reverse suspension
Kent Boucher (01:24.014)
But the craziest symptom of doing that is your man boobs are like slappity in the face. Like, you've got two black eyes when you get out of there. And Nick just goes, we didn't know each other super well yet. He just goes, man.
Ray Geroff (01:24.386)
You
Ray Geroff (01:29.73)
Dude,
Kent Boucher (01:44.75)
My man boobs are flopping around a little bit. I was like, that is exactly what I'm experiencing myself.
Nicolas Lirio (01:54.19)
We've all had man.
Kent Boucher (01:56.66)
That better not be on the podcast, by the way. We don't want Ray to get in trouble.
Nicolas Lirio (01:58.717)
it's going. No, no.
Ray Geroff (02:02.316)
That'd be a whole HR. All right, well we're now.
Kent Boucher (02:05.397)
That's it?
Nicolas Lirio (02:08.461)
you're ready take a minute look into the camera and let her know
Ray Geroff (02:15.618)
Hi, I'm Ray Garoff. a district heritage biologist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.
Kent Boucher (02:24.269)
Yep.
Nicolas Lirio (02:25.163)
perfect.
Kent Boucher (02:27.47)
Remember try and keep it as close to as good and direct as you can when you're talking into it.
Nicolas Lirio (02:28.462)
Yeah, everybody should.
Nicolas Lirio (02:35.446)
And Kent's gonna be the main host here. I just sometimes I take over and I'm sorry. I'm drinking caffeine.
Kent Boucher (02:42.424)
Pull up, get your phone out and pull up my script so you don't. So you don't give me all out of order in my, how I have it. I put thought into.
Nicolas Lirio (02:45.976)
so I don't ruin this podcast.
The last one just happened in front of us. know what I When we started, we started talking about farts. That was it. We were off to the races on that broadcast.
Ray Geroff (02:58.348)
And now...
Kent Boucher (03:01.762)
Well, you had to you had to clarify because your chair. I'm still not sure it was was your chair.
Nicolas Lirio (03:09.57)
My new five finger toe shock sock showed up to
Ray Geroff (03:12.536)
Well, when the patio table starts going.
Kent Boucher (03:14.958)
No, wasn't the chair. That's right. it's just a woodpecker.
Yeah, are you ready? What's the matter with you?
Nicolas Lirio (03:27.662)
I got distracted. man, I got it. I got it.
Kent Boucher (03:35.522)
Alright, here we go. Let's have some fun. also perspective is just as good as expertise. So if you want to say, I'm just spitballing here, great. Or I have a hypothesis that people love that because they can't get it from a book. They only get it from a guy who just lived it out. Okay, here we go. Let's have some fun. In three, two, one.
Ray Geroff (03:51.796)
Gotcha.
Okay.
Kent Boucher (04:04.91)
Ray, how many burn sheds are you up to this year? I guess how often do you find burn sheds when you do a prairie burn?
Ray Geroff (04:18.69)
Well, we're doing prairie burns, even woodland burns. There are sheds around. mean, there's always usually a few found here or there. Depends on the site, depends on what's going on. Some people get more excited over them than others. I do deer hunt, but my saying is you can't eat the antlers. That's true.
Kent Boucher (04:33.599)
people.
Kent Boucher (04:38.67)
yeah that's true you're not supposed to
Nicolas Lirio (04:44.974)
What What site when you're looking at it and You look at the site and you go, before you burn their sheds in there. What are you looking at?
Ray Geroff (04:47.234)
Ray Geroff (04:58.934)
I mean, it's just in general knowing how many deer are at the site. mean, there's a lot of my sites that have very high deer populations, so there's going to be plenty of sheds in there usually. we don't, I mean, I don't really collect them, so it's not a big, big, big pull on me. But I know that, like the site I was burning in yesterday at Jim Edgar Panther Creek, huge, huge deer population there. We burned quite a few thousand acres there yesterday. It's going to be hammered hard.
for the next couple weeks of people out there looking for those golden trophies.
Kent Boucher (05:32.054)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. What's the biggest one you've ever found in a burn? You ever get one that's like over 80 inches?
Ray Geroff (05:40.838)
I couldn't tell you the measurement. I've had one, somebody found one of my burns that had 14 points on one side. What? Yeah. Yeah, it had, I don't, I don't know. And I don't know. I don't remember for some, even if it was on private ground or where it was, it might've been the landowner. Cause I'm thinking it was a private, the one private side. think the landowner got it.
Nicolas Lirio (05:49.998)
Who went home with that sucker?
Nicolas Lirio (06:01.602)
But you work with the DNR. What do you do with private landowners? Who's allowed to have the DNR burn their stuff?
Ray Geroff (06:08.578)
So we do have multiple programs within the DNR. So there's the Nature Preserves Commission, and so there's high quality natural areas on private lands. So there is a land protection option there with them. And so if they protect their land, usually it's because there's either state listed or federally listed species, meaning threatened or endangered species, or a high quality natural area, which could be a hill prairie, could be oak woods, it could be any series of our natural area designations.
And if they're high quality, then they can go into this protection plan. And so then with that, our NAPs, our Nature Preservation Specialists, do the same things on those lands as we do on the public lands. But we work hand in hand. So they help us on the public lands, do burns, and then we help them on those private land sites that are protected in our system whenever we can.
Kent Boucher (07:00.45)
That's cool. I don't think that's true. Yeah, don't think we have, don't, yeah, I know they do some burning on some of the public land in Iowa for sure, but I don't know if that's just, you know, the regular, you know, state techs that, you know, biologist techs or whatever the term is that are doing that work or...
Nicolas Lirio (07:01.61)
Iowa doesn't do anything. Specifically with burning. don't know of any.
Kent Boucher (07:27.18)
you know, they're assigned to a certain region or what, but. don't know if on IHAP, if there's some of that that goes on or if, you know, I have is just the voluntary access program, you know, where someone can say, you know.
Nicolas Lirio (07:33.376)
private land.
Kent Boucher (07:47.406)
I'll open up my ground to pheasant hunters or deer hunters or whatever. And then the state gives them some kind of stipend. They may include in that, you know, maybe some burn assistance, but that's a good question, Nick. We should. That's a good question that there's an answer to and we should find that answer for sure. OK, so my next my next big opening question is, mean, yesterday, as you said, you just burned. 3900 acres yesterday.
Just estimating, how many acres do you think you've burned in your career?
Ray Geroff (08:20.93)
That's a question I wish I had an answer to. I mean, this year, just this year so far within my own district, I'm probably at around five, over 5,000. So probably this season so far I'm at 6,000 or so and we're still burning. So I mean, I don't know, been burning with DNR for over a decade. So I mean.
Extrapolate that out, probably 80,000 to 100,000 acres in Illinois.
Kent Boucher (08:55.086)
Wow. That's lot of work.
Ray Geroff (08:58.414)
Yeah, I mean, I don't know the exact number I wish. There's people at Talley. How many burns they've been on? How many acres? I wish I would have done that. Yeah. We have a Western wildfire crew where we go out on Western fires for deployments. OK. We're not a hot shot crew, but we'll work with whatever crews are paired with us. We will cut in line. We'll do mop up operations.
Kent Boucher (09:06.562)
And then you do some burning out west too.
Kent Boucher (09:16.238)
So you're working with like hotshot crews and stuff?
Ray Geroff (09:26.683)
Whatever whatever they need us to do will do
Kent Boucher (09:28.716)
Ever have any like real bad close calls?
Ray Geroff (09:31.18)
We've had some interesting days.
Kent Boucher (09:35.212)
That's a pretty dangerous job. mean, those Western, like smoke jumpers and hotshot crews. mean, that's, that's super dangerous. Some of that work.
Ray Geroff (09:44.014)
in unforgiving terrain.
Nicolas Lirio (09:46.188)
Yeah, yeah, that's real. What when you're burning on a like a prairie or on a larger landscape, you know, what what are the common mistakes that lead to being unsafe? Obviously, wind changing direction can just happen. that's nothing.
Kent Boucher (10:02.202)
And I got a question to pair with that. When you have to burn something and your gut just kind of does a little, you get the butterflies looking at that like, I do not want to burn that. That just looks, I mean, even on the best condition day, that one makes me nervous.
Ray Geroff (10:17.262)
So whenever I get feelings like that, I first usually go back to what's my weather forecast? What do my fuels look like? What's the burn history of this site? And then I'll also go talk to one colleague or two of mine that have a lot of burn experience as well and just kind of run through it with them to make sure that we're checking all the boxes, but We have anytime we're gonna conduct a prescribed burn. We have to have a burn plan
And that burn plan has to be approved through multiple levels, and then we have to get associated permits and everything like that. And so yeah, you can go through your burn plan. It's a good place to start. Make sure you're meeting all of your prescription requirements, temperature, humidity, wind speeds, wind directions, minimum crew specifications, things like that. if you're meeting all of those, that gives you kind of that first better feeling. And then when you talk to who else you're working with that day and...
depending on experience levels and who you have, a lot of that can dictate your overall feeling for the day. And we try not to have anything really go sideways. Knock on wood, when we've been burning here, we haven't had any of those big catastrophes or big bad things happen.
Nicolas Lirio (11:35.758)
and
Kent Boucher (11:36.046)
So going back to Nicholas's question, when people get it wrong, it's usually because of one of those things that you mentioned that are a component to a burn plan they didn't figure in correctly.
Ray Geroff (11:48.172)
that or somebody usually in most cases somebody has done something like you said not according to the plan or not with the proper crew supporting them or something to that effect in a lot of cases. mean obviously there is abnormalities that occur and I mean we all know how accurate weather forecasts always are.
Kent Boucher (12:11.758)
It's supposed be in the middle of a tornado right now.
Nicolas Lirio (12:14.926)
It's hot.
Kent Boucher (12:18.058)
We got a lot of driving left today. Did ever see a firenado?
Ray Geroff (12:24.289)
Yes we have.
Nicolas Lirio (12:26.21)
We had one with switchgrass. There wasn't enough wind. was basically no wind. it created, like the fire created its own vortex. And it was just a firenado traveling through the field. And that was pretty freaky. I don't like that stuff.
Ray Geroff (12:38.466)
Yeah. Yeah, we see those on generally a couple times. I mean, every year I see some. Yeah. Yeah. Depends on how big they get.
Kent Boucher (12:50.338)
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, that's that's it's really interesting and I guess I mean we could jump ahead since we're talking about it. I wanted to talk about. The just proper burn conditions. So when you say things like humidity, wind speed, wind direction. Wind direction is probably the most obvious, but let's go with humidity and wind speed. Are there just ranges that's like now no burning?
today because you know it's this winds this fashion humidity is this lower this high even won't get a good burn. What are those?
Ray Geroff (13:29.026)
guidelines. Yeah, so I mean, a lot of that's going to be site dependent. It's going to be what are your fuels? is your topography? What is around your unit? Like, what do your brakes look like? What's going on? Sure. So I mean, there's not really a one size fits all on it. And depending on the site, you might want more humidity versus lower humidity, depending on what your objectives of the burn are. In general, most of our burn plans for DNR, where we have professional crews that we've put together that
We burn a lot together. We'll usually have the range for humidity go down to around 20%. And I mean, usually the upper end of that is 75%, 80%. But things aren't going to burn as good at that level. Wind speeds, we like them to be 20 or less at the 20 foot wind speed. And so depending on if you're burning in an open prairie versus a sheltered area, it depends on what the weather forecast says.
And sometimes those wind speeds also help, are calculated into your dispersion indices to make sure your smoke's gonna disperse properly if you have smoke sensitive areas around. It's like yesterday when we were burning up there at Jim Edgar, it's a large burn and a lot of smoke gonna be going up. Even though there is not smoke sensitive area, really smoke sensitive areas right adjacent to it, or that would really meet that within a mile range or anything.
We still are concerned with it and so we're going to put so much smoke up we don't want that smoke to go 20 miles down the road and settle out so we want it to disperse well and so there we have to have a dispersion to see if good or excellent usually for some of those units and to get that you need the wind speed I mean there's a lot that goes into it wind speed atmospheric stability all those different things play into each other to determine how that's the transport winds and all that play into to that category.
So you want to make sure it's good.
Nicolas Lirio (15:25.452)
With humidity, it gets too dry, obviously if it's too humid it just doesn't burn well, but if it's getting too dry, it just like the fire's more likely to jump?
Ray Geroff (15:36.322)
What's Yes, it gets extremely more volatile the less humidity there is. And especially when you get down into the teens, pretty much everything's going to start catching fire. All your
Kent Boucher (15:49.246)
You see where the heat, which fire is just basically visible heat, but you can see where just being something dry enough is in close enough proximity to that heat that it'll just ignite.
Ray Geroff (16:02.038)
Yeah, I mean that's where those single embers that can go and catch the base of a tree that's got a defect in it or an animal hole in it catches in that little spot and then that tree is gonna burn on those low humidity days. On days with higher humidity, a lot of times an ember, even if it lands in the same spot, it may not actually catch that snag tree on fire.
Kent Boucher (16:22.926)
What are you doing when a snag tree catches fire? Do just let it go or?
Ray Geroff (16:26.158)
A lot of them, if we can't put them out or if they're a threat to throwing numbers over the line, we cut them down. OK. So we try to put them out or cut them down.
Nicolas Lirio (16:35.31)
throwing embers over the line that's interesting well here here's something everybody everybody in their mom
Kent Boucher (16:41.134)
I thought of that really, but a chainsaw is like a really critical piece of equipment when you're doing a timber burn.
Nicolas Lirio (16:48.302)
Have you ever done a timber burn? We've only for open prairie burns. Yeah the but everyone and their mom asking hey, do you burn? Does anybody burn and and there are a lot of issues with it and that's why there's not that many people that do it and I will one of them is Logistical you let's say you have a list of 20 places you want to burn and they all have different conditions you want to meet different wins different areas different wind speeds different
Ray Geroff (16:49.996)
No. We've done- really?
Nicolas Lirio (17:14.99)
different wind dispersion that you're requiring depending on the road. know how do you organize that? How do you like well Wednesday we're gonna do this one instead of this one like I know it sounds stupid but is there like a software where you like you know type in all the perfect conditions for each place and
Ray Geroff (17:33.182)
Not that we use, I just use. a. Yeah, you probably did. Somebody. I'll be happy to test the software if you get it. right now I just use.
Nicolas Lirio (17:35.694)
Just made someone a million dollars.
Nicolas Lirio (17:46.08)
Yeah, honestly.
Ray Geroff (17:47.086)
I just use a notepad and I write down all the sites at beginning of the year that I want to and then if there is a specific wind speed or wind direction or certain things that I'm looking for I'll note that next to it and the same with my colleagues because we each have different districts and so depending on the day, depending on whether I'm helping one of them burn or if I'm burning my own district and so we just try to pick and choose based off a priority of burn site when it could be
the species present so different sites we have to burn by certain dates or certain weather conditions to prevent causing harm to the species present on them. And so we do prioritize sites with sensitive species on them over sites that don't have sensitive species.
Nicolas Lirio (18:34.552)
are some sensitive species you're looking for?
Ray Geroff (18:36.692)
It depends on where you're at. It could be plants. There's certain plants that are obviously going to break dormancy before others.
Nicolas Lirio (18:44.322)
you're talking about those like early spring ephemeral...
Ray Geroff (18:46.772)
Yeah, and some of those are state listed plants, so they're threatened or endangered or just very conservative and so we don't want to mess up things with those. Animals, you've got bats, federally state listed bats that can be, you got to account for. The biggest one that a lot of people already know about is the reptiles, the snakes and the turtles. Right, it depends on the place and the timing and how things go but...
Kent Boucher (19:11.328)
Snakes get hammered by burns.
Ray Geroff (19:16.682)
There can be some mortality to them. Even frogs. So I mean, in Illinois we have the Illinois chorus frog. It's a state listed frog species and it inhabits our sand prairies and sand burns substantially better than a lot of other letter prairies or woodland sites. And so we have to burn those before those frogs come up and they'll come up early spring. They're one of the first to come up.
Nicolas Lirio (19:41.283)
Interesting.
Kent Boucher (19:42.274)
That is very interesting. I never thought of it that way, but having to plan around, you know, the... I wonder, did monarchs, did they ever get officially listed?
Nicolas Lirio (19:51.451)
No, no, no, they didn't. It's been a big deal. basically are caught in limbo.
Kent Boucher (19:55.854)
So I wonder if that were to happen, if they became federally listed as an endangered species, because this plays into kind of the next thing that I have here, barn timing. We're hearing more and more, I mean, his.
Nicolas Lirio (20:12.782)
This is about to be a great point. I'm so sorry. Can I you pull your mic up just a little bit? I'm watching you talk over it.
Kent Boucher (20:18.126)
So conventionally, we'll say, since settlement, since it became not the Native Americans who were doing the bulk of the burning on the land, spring is when most burning takes place. And now it seems to be transitioning where people are working in summer burns or working in fall burns. And we're finding more and more information out about that.
Jeremy franchise telling you about he's really big on doing a fall burn or dormant season burn Which you guys are just about out of time for a dormant season burn right now It's awfully green down here compared to where we're at but
Kent Boucher (21:01.938)
If, let's say if monarchs were listed, would that cancel out basically all of summer, early fall burn window? Because the caterpillars would be on the milkweeds.
Ray Geroff (21:16.374)
Well, I don't know that it would. It would really depend on what the regulations that come down are. Obviously, with all those different federal species, they have different conservation guidance documents. So we would just have to see what those say and see what's going on with them. I we have other butterfly species in the state Illinois, such as the regal fritillary. That is a state-listed species that we
manage sites for. So I mean depending on burn timing you could vary burn timing and in the case of those sometimes you can look at a growing season burn to burn it during their flight time before they're going to lay their eggs. So that way you're not burning up the eggs or the larvae or anything like that. It really depends on the species and overall their life cycle and conservation needs.
Kent Boucher (22:05.08)
sure. Yeah, it's a wrinkle I've never I should have but I've never I've never considered that. So that's a really good point.
Nicolas Lirio (22:11.564)
talk about a little bit with like pheasants right the burn during nesting season stuff for pheasants but or the habitat on our farm but yeah it is when you have a full ecosystem yeah and I mean our real issue is that we have so little of the ecosystem that's the yeah you know if there was more of it then it wouldn't be a big deal at all
Kent Boucher (22:26.338)
Right.
Ray Geroff (22:29.248)
Right, the bigger sites you... and that's the thing is historically fires were a lot bigger. so I mean, when you have a bunch of people, everybody doing 40, 50 acre burns, yeah, they're very beneficial, they're very helpful. But if you have, in most cases, those burns, every... they try to go through them and get every inch black. Because they think that if I burned this unit, I need this to all be black. Because otherwise, I didn't accomplish my goal. Well...
If you leave some of those areas with some unburned fuel or you have patchiness in it, that's all refugia for some of those insects, for some of those other species. And it can't even be in the woods. mean, we burn a ton of woodlands. so those areas that don't burn can be where you have acorns and stuff that have hit the ground. And so by not burning them up, you're allowing some of that oak regeneration. But just because it didn't burn this year doesn't mean that section isn't going to burn the next time.
Nicolas Lirio (23:25.198)
If anything, you would have more fuel on it. That's interesting. It's another way that we as humans are controlled. well, we got to our categories with this is a burn year. It all needs to burn this year, you know, instead of just be like, fill out about this part.
Ray Geroff (23:37.493)
And so like at Siloam Springs State Park, we just did a burn there. It was roughly 1,200 acres there of all timber. And we did that a couple of weeks ago. And there's whole hillsides in there that didn't burn. And we didn't send people in to light them. And we didn't try to light them. Because we wanted, in that larger unit, we wanted areas that were unburned to provide that refugia for those species. And we've been
Out there we've got an ongoing joint research project with Illinois College out of Jacksonville. There's a bat researcher there, Dr. Brian Arnold, and so we've been for the past, I think this is the seventh, this year I think will be the seventh year of data collection. We've been monitoring the bat populations out there of burned units versus non-burned units, and then also whether the bat use of the current, what was burned this current year versus what was burned the previous year.
And so we're seeing some trends there. Wow. And with the federally listed bats using those units, we're seeing that they are showing a preference towards the most recently burned unit.
Nicolas Lirio (24:45.191)
Interesting where do bats live I thought they just lived in soffits Just trees
Kent Boucher (24:50.399)
You
Ray Geroff (24:53.306)
Urban jungle, but yeah, but no they live underneath a lot of those a lot of the federally listed bats You're gonna see are gonna live in the snag trees underneath the flaking bark in those type of type of areas
Kent Boucher (25:06.67)
Okay, so I want to come back to burn timing and just walk through what's What can be achieved by I mean, can you burn all four seasons? So I want to I want to come back to that But before I do we let's just I mean it's basic We I think when we talk about burning we talk with an assumption that everybody under understands the purpose of why burning is a thing But let's just start right there. What is being achieved when we burn a
Ray Geroff (25:32.122)
So, depends on, once again, all site dependent. mean, so I have sites that are remnant prairies and so obviously burning those is more of a maintenance thing to help set back some of the woody encroachment, help cycle the nutrients in the prairie, promote, depending on timing, if you burn in the fall you're going to be promoting more of your ford species. If you burn it in the spring, you're going be promoting more of your grass species. And so I mean,
just depends on what you're looking at. And so there's other prairies that are more degraded, where we've done more cutting and we've got more slash on the ground. So we may be burning to burn up some of that material so that way we can seed it. We could have had a timber mulcher, a fecon head in there mulching stuff up. And so we could be trying to burn up that mulch to then allow the prairie to come back through.
We've done a lot of that with the Illinois Hill Prairie Partnership, where we're working on. Mostly with that we're working mostly on private lands. It's a cooperative thing between the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pheasants Forever, Quail Unlimited, NWTF, mean, whole group, Prairie Land Conservancy and Land Trust. mean, everybody working together to try to do this. And so we'll work on those sites to try to get that mulch up so we can restore these hill prairies.
Nicolas Lirio (26:56.782)
When do you burn that and what is that burn like? We've never done that. I don't think you've done that. I've never done it. And when you burn prairie, it's like burning newspaper, right? It's just, but mulch seems very different.
Ray Geroff (27:07.982)
So it's usually interspersed with the prairie grasses and stuff there. And so there's areas that are solid mulch and they will burn. And sometimes they'll burn for quite a long time, for a week even at times.
Kent Boucher (27:18.654)
I was just, we just talked about this with Thomas Mills. I was wondering on a mulch site if you could just burn it up.
Ray Geroff (27:25.23)
So that's one where typically if we're going to do one of those, obviously the higher the humidity, the less likely the mulch is to burn. So if you're not wanting the mulch to burn, you're going to go with a higher humidity day when that mulch is carrying moisture. Otherwise, you're going to want to burn it when you've got lower humidity and it's dry all the way through. And if you do that, you're going to be investing a lot of time. You're going to do a lot of monitoring with it, but you can get a lot of that consumed.
get it to a point where you can see through a lot more of that.
Kent Boucher (27:59.182)
Along those lines. I just talked about this with Judd yesterday who is the person who led us to you He was doing a site visit and these folks had a lot of Eastern red cedar encroachment that they needed to remove. I've always just thought Cedars burn really really well it could you not just like do a perimeter back burn around the whole hillside covered in cedars
and then just go into the middle and just light that baby on fire and burn all those cedars up on that hillside.
Ray Geroff (28:32.566)
I wish you could. Here in Illinois, it doesn't really work that good. I mean, you might get a few of them to torch up. Unless you're in really, really drought conditions with really low RH and you have enough fuel to get those trees to go, it's really hard.
Nicolas Lirio (28:34.881)
You
Nicolas Lirio (28:52.062)
Like if they were surrounded with switchgrass would you and the
Ray Geroff (28:55.074)
You get the ones on the edge. I mean, and then it would die out as you got
Kent Boucher (28:58.858)
So you so people can that are nervous about burning like a cedar hillside they could probably actually do it
Ray Geroff (29:05.482)
I don't always want to make that recommendation because depending on how...
Nicolas Lirio (29:10.734)
Throw a match out there.
Kent Boucher (29:14.146)
Go get dinner and come back and see what's left.
Ray Geroff (29:16.174)
I mean everything site dependent, we have a lot of so it sounds kind of almost like maybe he was at a hill prairie because we do we do try to manage some of those and We've tried to run we run fire through a lot of those cedars it a burnout the bottoms of them The tops will still be there and so they'll still gonna still gonna grow They're still gonna produce seed and the birds are still gonna eat it and they're still gonna spread it Yeah, so I mean you're not so you really hold shit. I mean yeah, well that or cut it and pile it or Or something to that effect
It also depends on the size of these cedar trees I mean if you're talking cedar trees that are a couple feet versus cedar trees that are 30 30 40 feet tall I mean, there's a big difference in how they're gonna go so I mean and and whether or not you're get Yeah, yeah like the the small ones as long as they're interspersed in grass if you run a fire through that and it burns Burns them up or at least gets all the needles pretty brown. There's a good chance that that that I mean if it burns it up, it's
Kent Boucher (30:02.218)
Christmas trees. Do you think those would go?
Ray Geroff (30:15.726)
pretty well going to die. So then you've set it back. You've set that succession back. And that's the goal that you're going for. And so there's a lot of those projects where, yeah, when we burn them, you'll have not a real thick grass layer yet, but you'll have cedar trees that are two foot tall. And we'll run a fire through them. And it'll kill those out for us. It'll clean them up rather than have to go back through and cut all those little bitty sprouts. I mean, yeah. It's just when they get big. I mean, honestly, for somebody who cuts these trees, I mean,
and stuff on these hill prairies, I hate cutting cedar trees that have been burned through. mean, cedar trees are bad enough to cut to begin with, but once you burn through them, then you've got even more dried needles, you've got more of that stuff that's just falling on you. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, they get less fun to cut once they're even burned.
Kent Boucher (30:58.878)
Yeah, down your shirt collar and everything.
Kent Boucher (31:05.73)
So, yeah, they are not fun to cut.
Nicolas Lirio (31:08.366)
We're talking about utility of burning. Obviously there's all sorts of things and niche things that we could go into. I'm very curious about invasive weeds. The ones that we hear a bunch, obviously Brome, Reed Canary, Canada Thistle. Those are the like, hard to get rid of it. Now we know Brome can definitely be set back.
Reed, can you ever have heard mixed reviews where people say, well, yeah, you burn it and then you graze it and then you're good? But I'm wondering if you've had any experience with it.
Ray Geroff (31:41.72)
So we, yeah, I mean, you can set some of them back like that, depending on what you got, the Grom, the Brom and the Reed Canary, I mean, we almost always still have to use chemical associated. Our bigger ones that we're dealing with, one of the larger ones, Sericea lespedeza. yeah, what do you do with it? So some people are growing season burning for it and having good results at times.
Nicolas Lirio (32:08.622)
I'm burning July.
Ray Geroff (32:09.472)
I guess yeah, so they're doing a growing season burn Then they're following that up with chemical in a lot of cases because it it will still come back up Resprout back up before a lot of the other stuff would turn green and come back up I believe
Nicolas Lirio (32:21.974)
goats like you know it's kind of a brushy thing that I mean it's not a brush but it's it feels a little stemmier and I wonder if goats wouldn't hammer it
Kent Boucher (32:22.456)
Get.
Ray Geroff (32:32.238)
Yeah, but I don't know. It's little of problem. Yeah. Yeah.
Kent Boucher (32:34.434)
So thick though.
Nicolas Lirio (32:37.004)
Well, I mean, like, if you burned it, and then when it was...
Kent Boucher (32:39.552)
But goats are goats are technically browsers and not grazers, right?
Ray Geroff (32:44.566)
Yeah, and I think they're going to eat off a lot of your other native stuff that you're wanting to promote as well too. I mean, I know people that are using it for brush control and honeysuckle and that kind of stuff and helping clean up some woods and in places like that. don't know how it's working on sericea per se, but there's two schools of thought with the sericea. Some people are doing the growing season burns followed with herbicide treatments.
The other method, like the side I said we were burning yesterday was Jim Edgar. There's a lot of sericea problems out there. And so what we've been doing is we've been burning in the dormant season because of some sensitive species out there that we don't want to burn during the summer and cause harm to. So we're burning in dormant season, which is actually stimulating the seed bank of the sericea. So it's actually causing more of it to grow. But what that's doing is then we can spray it.
So we're getting rid of all that thatch. And so then our chemical treatments are even more effective because it's re-sprouting back up and we're hitting it. And what we're actually doing is exhausting that seed bank because that sericea seed can persist in the seed bank for many, years. Right. And so it can persist for tons of years. so by continuously getting it to sprout back up and stimulate that seed bank, we're using that seed bank up sooner. And some areas where we had 98 %
Nicolas Lirio (33:51.992)
That's a legume, right? Right. Yeah.
Ray Geroff (34:06.688)
Suresha coverage in a field six years later now with this burning and spraying regime. We're down to only a couple percent Wow
Nicolas Lirio (34:15.063)
But you burning and spraying every year for six straight years. Wow.
Ray Geroff (34:18.76)
Yes. But we're getting a huge, we're getting a really good handle on it. this isn't just in a typical ag field, this is in a decent quality natural area. And so our other species are still responding well because we're as late in the year as we can. So most of those other species are starting to senesce, especially the more conservative ones that we're most.
Nicolas Lirio (34:38.797)
sure there's a Suresia hangout still when the other ones are senescent.
Ray Geroff (34:41.419)
Well, because it's not flowering until later in the year. It's flowering in August time frame. And so that's when we're hitting it.
Nicolas Lirio (34:49.422)
Okay, so if anything, you might be hurting maybe some of the later Astors or Golden Riders. Those are a lot easier to have come back than some of those ephemerals are. Wow, that is fascinating.
Ray Geroff (34:53.811)
Yes, we're hitting a lot of those.
Ray Geroff (34:59.734)
And there is some of those other later season Forbes that we have hit harder. But the other thing is too, is the Suresha will take over and knock those out anyway. so we've been watching this closely for the last six, seven years now and we're seeing very positive results.
Nicolas Lirio (35:15.899)
use a chemical wiper what are they called?
Kent Boucher (35:19.47)
Oh yeah, just a wiper bar.
Ray Geroff (35:23.15)
labor bar? Yeah, we don't use those on large scale here in Illinois too much. We're using a lot of high-boy ag sprayers and drones anymore. drone industry and the technology with them is really, really pretty cool. And how tight of spots they can get into, the effectiveness they can treat it with, and not disturbing the ground at all in doing so is really, really cool.
Nicolas Lirio (35:50.838)
And they like even with Roundup because I have a friend who does drone spraying and he says Roundup and some of the other chemicals he has a like fungicide does great because you don't need nearly as much but he has he can struggle to get plant
Kent Boucher (36:05.934)
Nick has got the coffee jitters bad. His legs are going on here.
Nicolas Lirio (36:10.614)
I'm really excited. I'm really enjoying this podcast. like, hear a lot of stuff over and over again, but you have told me probably 10 things already that I have not heard on any other.
Kent Boucher (36:21.403)
It's just so entertaining when you're all methed out on coffee. I didn't put this guy to work.
Nicolas Lirio (36:28.494)
Well, and so.
Ray Geroff (36:31.694)
Well, we're not doing much of the fungicide and I haven't done many like roundup treatments with drones I'm more doing broadleaf control and brush control and sericea control. So I mean more of the chemicals I'm using her pasture guard and those those Sericea yeah pasture garden one of my was probably my most chosen chemical
Kent Boucher (36:47.95)
Is that what you're using on this?
Kent Boucher (36:53.698)
People like that on Canada Thistle too, right?
Ray Geroff (36:56.194)
Yeah, yeah, a of money. Yeah, a lot of people use it for a lot of grazing lands. I mean, that was what it was originally designed for, but it does work really effectively against Suresha. There's other chemicals as well. Vastland and an escort XP or two others. mean, depending on what you're spraying around, you also have to be careful. I mean, different ag fields, different sensitive plants, you really got to watch your mix. But the nice thing with those drones is versus a helicopter or anything, you have a lot less.
drift issues and you can have that application height be lower and have less issues like that.
Nicolas Lirio (37:32.814)
always thought chemical spraying was like making chili. You could just kind of throw whatever in there.
Kent Boucher (37:37.104)
Yeah, no, that's not true.
Nicolas Lirio (37:40.27)
I would never do that. And one more thing on the invasive. then I don't know the Canada thistle. Do you ever use burning to to set that back or do you even have much of that?
Kent Boucher (37:46.254)
Okay, you're good.
Ray Geroff (37:57.038)
We do have Canada thistle. It's not usually one of my main burn objective species Obviously, I mean the rosettes could be damaged with fire if you have a good enough thatch layer there to put some heat on them But I mean if the the flower stalk is there the seeds already out there in the environment. So You're not gonna do unless you did a growing season burn on it whenever before the flowers fully fully set seed and knocked them back that way, but
Nicolas Lirio (38:27.328)
Interesting. Okay.
Ray Geroff (38:28.43)
I was just curious. I don't have much experience, like I said, with that. That's not usually one of my burn objectives.
Kent Boucher (38:33.944)
Do ever use that same progression of burn to spray that you do with sericea? Do you ever do that with brome? Because brome is a cool season grass, let's say you burn now, early March, and then boom, that's gonna be one of your first things to green up and it's gonna be a month before your warm season plants are there. And then go in with a herbicide application, do you do that?
Ray Geroff (38:58.414)
Yeah, we've done that burn and chemical app stuff for brome and cool season grass issues or their infiltrating prairies.
Kent Boucher (39:07.82)
That's good to know. I mean that's a common problem in the prairie reconstruction.
Ray Geroff (39:12.162)
I mean it getting rid of that thatch down there I mean even if it doesn't do a whole ton to set back the actual Brome grass itself getting rid of that patch getting that new growth to come up
Kent Boucher (39:22.7)
Yeah, that soil black so it temps spike and then it greens up faster and you can go.
Ray Geroff (39:28.91)
You can get that flush of it and you can get a better kill rate. The more of your plant that's exposed that you can get the chemical on, obviously the better kill rate you're going to have.
Kent Boucher (39:42.7)
No, that's all super practical and super useful information. Okay, let's go back to, or wait, let's answer this question here. What happens when a prairie just goes unburned? Obviously, it's an important enough thing that that's your, I mean, at least this time of year, your main line of work. And so, if...
If it wasn't that important, don't think Illinois DNR would, I used to be a resident of Illinois. There's not money coming out of the state's budget. flowing into the DNR. So it's obviously quite, it's obviously quite an important, process to happen, to have healthy, a healthy, landscape. What happens, what are the symptoms of a prairie that goes on burn?
Ray Geroff (40:33.314)
So yeah, mean, obviously succession is going to occur. And so as succession occurs, you're going to go from your grasslands to you're have some of your shrubs and then trees and slowly but surely it's just going to continue to transition to a shrubland with interspersed trees. Then ultimately, the trees are going to grow bigger and you're going to end up with woodlands. I mean, that's standard textbook succession. And so there's pretty much.
I forget who it was that said it, but they said there's three methods to deal with succession. The axe, the plow, and the match. the axe is expensive these days. It's not cheap to, or it takes a long time to chainsaw things down or cut them down. It's expensive to run machinery, and those things can also cause soil disturbances. You can have invasive species brought in on those machines if they're not cleaned properly.
Kent Boucher (41:29.686)
kill the prairie.
Ray Geroff (41:30.542)
Yeah, you can have issues with that. But they're very effective. We use them a lot. the plow, obviously we don't want to plow up our prairies. then the match. The match is probably your most cost effective tool to help set that succession back. I mean, runs through the, it goes through those prairies. It puts that heat on those stems of those woody species. Causes it to break those vascular tissues down a little bit.
sets them back and sometimes it just top kills them sometimes it depending on the species can can wipe them out a little bit just depends on what's actually going on there like you asked about cedars earlier cedars are one that usually if you get the if you get it all the way burned it's it's not going to re sprout because but yeah you're that succession back and depending on how long it's been since it burned I prefer on my prairies there's some prairies I burn every year
Every single year I try to burn them. Some of it's for the sericea management, others is because if you don't burn them regularly, that fuel load, that thatch load gets so much higher. And so the problem with that is then obviously your ground nesting birds, your quail, your pheasants, those type of things can't move. turtles struggle to move through all that thatch and it can cause issues for them. But the other thing is, is that fuel load gets so high that then too, when you run that fire through it, it can almost be more of a
In a prairie, could be more similar to some of those western fires when you see all the trees, all the crown fire ran through and destroyed the habitat more. But if you do a more an every year burn or so, that fuel doesn't get that high. So you won't have that full scorched earth as much. And the heat isn't near as intense. so a lot of those insects and a lot of those things closer to the ground are not being impacted as much. And so you'll have more of a skirting fire than you will just one of those raging
head fires that's ripping across. And personally, like a really good backing fire. It does a lot more good on a lot of these prairies than sending that big head fire. The head fire is just an instant burst of heat where that resonance time of that slow backing fire puts that heat on those stems and really does a good job. Also provides a lot more chance for wildlife to escape, to not have any issues, reduce some of those issues and all that associated.
Kent Boucher (43:56.792)
Yeah, that's, I mean, exactly what I was looking for there. The reasons for why we do it. I have heard this, I don't know if it's criticism might be too strong of a word, but I have heard someone say, I thought the point of prairie, you know, one of the advantages of it, we'll say, is that it is carbon sequestration. But when you light it on fire, you're releasing all that carbon into the atmosphere. And...
I we don't need exact math numbers here, but is there a just so explanation for how it all checks out in the end?
Ray Geroff (44:37.166)
I'm not a big expert in that field. yeah. I'm sure there's some statistician or chemist out there that would have a real good answer for that. yeah, mean, prairies are sequestering that carbon. As they're burning, yes, there is things being released. But overall, for the health of that prairie and for it to continue to thrive, usually you're going to need some kind of.
Kent Boucher (44:42.958)
I'm sure he's biometric.
Ray Geroff (45:05.794)
Disturbance factor and that disturbance factor can be fire. It could be strip disking It could be in some cases mowing but overall fire I mean it when you mow you're promoting other species when you're disking it all depends on the site and what you you can do and there's some areas you can't burn because of Different situations neighboring properties infrastructure stuff like that. Sometimes there's just places that you can't get a fire on it. So then you do have
do some of those other methods but overall fire is your seems to be our best.
Nicolas Lirio (45:37.772)
We're the difference year 2-3-4 after either a burn versus doing strip disking, which we don't like.
Ray Geroff (45:45.452)
like. Yeah, so depends on soil types and everything associated. So some of my sand prairies, I've got a sand prairie that I can't, couldn't get fire on for quite a while just because of certain factors involved. And, so we did strip disking on it. it's the sand prairies are very sparse. There's not a ton. There's a lot of bare sand and the grasses are typically shorter, not as, tall or anything. and the four component.
Still, it's all very sparse. mean, you're talking stuff that has, in Illinois, have cactus growing in it, which a lot of people don't realize. have native cactuses in Illinois. But when you run fires through that, it does really well. But when you disk it, it has lot of the same effects because it's just helping reduce that succession and create that disturbance of the soil. So some of those seeds that have landed on the surface of that sand haven't made it.
gotten worked in at all, but we just do it lightly. We don't go real deep. so usually when I've done it on those, I've done it really late in the fall. And so they disc lightly and a lot of those bunch grasses, I've actually gone out there and looked in the spring. And so through the freeze and thaw of the winter and the snow and everything else, it's kind of actually put that bunch grass clod back kind of in the furrow. And that same bunch then is rerouting partially and growing back up. So it's not like
We don't do our strip disking when I say that isn't like what you envision for conventional tillage on in an agricultural setting. It's a lot less impactful. But I don't usually like to do that in my tall grass prairies or anything like that because it seems to set things back a lot further and actually can create more issues for invasive species for coming in when you break that sod up.
Nicolas Lirio (47:42.342)
that I am excited for disking in a prayer field is the hills. If you do a real light disking you can bust up those because some of those things you get it if you get a prayer that was planted really well 20 years ago
Ray Geroff (47:43.446)
it about very
Dang it.
Ray Geroff (47:56.414)
You can't tell me any insects are
Kent Boucher (48:00.729)
Wait a minute here!
Nicolas Lirio (48:04.78)
So well, and let's say they go in 20 years ago into the CRP, and then at 10 years, their prairie still looks good. So they re-up. And then at the 20-year mark, it doesn't quite look good enough, so they have to redo it. Those are rough, man, if they don't disk it down to, or yeah, disk it.
Kent Boucher (48:23.124)
Some of that though is like if that's if that's where you know the anthills might be a symptom of a healthy mature prayer.
Nicolas Lirio (48:34.478)
I think the best use for disking in a field is if we're gonna come in afterwards and plant it
Ray Geroff (48:39.928)
Just for your own personal comfort. Yeah, On that tractor seat so you're not bouncing the seat.
Nicolas Lirio (48:43.486)
One, I need air conditioning and really good shocks. Look, I did not.
Ray Geroff (48:48.462)
So attractive.
Kent Boucher (48:51.426)
Hey, you got shocks on your tractor? What tractor are you using?
Ray Geroff (48:53.198)
You
Nicolas Lirio (48:55.202)
The head came to work for us after most of our tractors, or after our main tractors had air conditioning.
Kent Boucher (49:01.568)
I did not get air conditioning on that job, but I was thankful I didn't because you guys, you and Carol were like, thank, you know, fighting over the crumbs like of, of air conditioning that those two tractors had. I just had the doors off of my cab.
Nicolas Lirio (49:13.386)
I was raised on a 7080 Alice Chalmers and 185 Alice Chalmers and there was no no air conditioning
Kent Boucher (49:20.814)
Yeah, I have not benefited much from the occasion.
Ray Geroff (49:21.794)
Now, boiled.
I'm just here to tell you that.
Nicolas Lirio (49:27.136)
Sometimes they've worked
Ray Geroff (49:29.56)
I it.
Kent Boucher (49:30.51)
Most of my tractor hours have been without it. But, so along with that, and I'm going to go back to timing after this question. Can burning ever be negative? I mean, just seems like fire good, you know what I mean? Like it's oversimplified to, you know what, that prayer needs to some fire, you know?
Nicolas Lirio (49:34.242)
That's funny.
Ray Geroff (49:56.95)
Well, it's like everything else. Fire is a tool in your toolbox. mean, you're to go fix your computer with a hammer. I mean, it's going to fix it once. You're not going to have to deal with it again. But it's one tool in your toolbox. And so yeah, improperly applied fire can be negative. Like I said earlier, we look at timing for certain species. We look at timing for different objectives. And so if you're not timing it properly for the objectives of your site,
then yeah, it could be negative. And if you burn a site underneath the wrong weather conditions, like your RH is too low for that site, you could have negative impacts, depending on whether it's a woodland or prairie or whatever's going on, you could have negative impacts. And that's why we have those prescriptions. so within the Illinois DNR, we have different divisions within the Office of Resource Conservation. So we have our forestry division, our
Natural Heritage Division, which is myself. We have our fisheries division, have our forestry division. Even for some of my burns, I actually can even consult our fisheries biologists because they're around our lakes and streams and I don't want to have issues with those species even if, depending on what's going on with erosional issues or anything like that. But everybody looks at these plans to make sure that it's going to accomplish the goals for...
our game species and our non-game species and also our forest resources. And ultimately, our fire program manager, Ben Snyder, he is out of more southern Illinois, but he's ultimately responsible for all of the wildfire program and prescribed, he's our fire program, so he's over it all. He has a few people, obviously regionals working underneath him, but they have to review all these burn plans as well, even after those of us in the field have conferred on them to make sure.
that everything, all the boxes are checked, the T's are crossed, I mean everything's good. And then those all also go to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for permitting. We have to coordinate through the Shawnee Dispatch Center with the Forest Service down there. So there's a lot of people involved on our side. Now private landowners in Illinois, you're supposed to have a approved prescribed burn plan.
Ray Geroff (52:15.33)
which depending on who you're working with, could be the NRCS office, be Pheasants Forever has some farm bill biologists that are really good. They also have a couple of fire coordinators in the state that are helping get prescribed burn associations up and going. US Fish and Wildlife Service partners program is actually working with them too to help bolster that. And so they can write those burn plans and help the landowners apply for the EPA permit, the open burning permit. So that way then they can properly apply fire to their.
to their proper year land.
Kent Boucher (52:45.58)
Yeah, that's really good to know and a good perspective to have that a good powerful tool can be used correctly and can be used incorrectly. Yeah. And it's good to remember that.
Ray Geroff (52:58.702)
I mean you could have, you could cause major damage to some places if not applied properly. Sure. Especially certain species.
Kent Boucher (53:05.816)
Well, that plays in well then as we head back to our burn timing. I guess right now we're dormant season, technically, but still winter right now. Next week, is it? Yeah, next week is the vernal equinox. I think so.
Ray Geroff (53:24.974)
Ready?
Nicolas Lirio (53:25.294)
week or... It's the 21st, right?
Kent Boucher (53:29.602)
I can never remember. It's the 20th the 21st or the 22nd I think it's the and I think you might be right might be the 21st but so I guess maybe not next week a little bit later than that, but Let's go with this time of year dormant season burn. What's the what's the goal with a dormant season burn?
Ray Geroff (53:52.846)
It's setback succession, nutrient cycling, depending on, could be prepping for seeding, could be prepping for further contractor work or invasive... Dormant season burning, if it's true dormant season, would help with your forbs versus your grasses. At this point in the spring here in Illinois,
Kent Boucher (54:08.578)
promote Forbes well to do a
Ray Geroff (54:21.806)
you're kind of, I would say that you're kind of getting past that. The grasses at this point. But there is some species even now that are, mean, prairie lilies and stuff like that are gonna be coming up. I mean, it's almost getting to that spring, that full spring area. I mean, the honeysuckle's starting to break dormancy. I mean, we're getting out of that.
Kent Boucher (54:25.996)
get more to benefiting the grass.
Ray Geroff (54:50.766)
With this last rains in this warm warm snap. I mean, it's 80 degrees almost today. Yeah, I mean It's the they're starting to break some dormancy and so I would say you're you're that spring I mean the ditches are green it up. So you're that spring sure ring season now
Kent Boucher (54:57.934)
Yeah, it's nice.
Kent Boucher (55:09.55)
So then that takes us to the next one, which is spring, which is just purely, it's going to benefit. Set back some of your cool.
Ray Geroff (55:14.67)
Well, yeah, set back some of that and also nutrient cycling and succession, I mean setting back succession, invasive exotic species management, type of things.
Nicolas Lirio (55:27.052)
I talked to a professional, he's done years and years of burning. We worry about if you burn kind of later spring, you really set back your forbs and your grasses kind of take over and and yeah second half of April and later.
Kent Boucher (55:39.188)
So by later spring are you saying like May?
Ray Geroff (55:43.534)
Yeah, we try to stop most most of our burning we're done by in my area. We're done by mid-april
Nicolas Lirio (55:50.03)
Okay, so if you burn something right at the end of that time frame, right in the middle of April 15, April 18, something like that, and you really help your grasses, he said that, yeah, that year, your grasses will be, they'll really come in strong, but by the next year, the Forbes come back. Has that been your experience?
Ray Geroff (56:07.982)
depends on the site, but yeah, mean in general, it depends on what forbes. mean some of the more conservative forbes and things like that maybe not as much as more of your common forbes or your ones that are in the CRP plannings and things like that maybe. But yeah, mean it is gonna promote those grasses at least for that year and depending on how much they, how much stronghold they take and what the resilience of those forbes are. Yeah, interesting.
Kent Boucher (56:33.55)
Okay, summer burn. are we, what's getting benefited and what's harmed?
Ray Geroff (56:39.18)
So like I said earlier, we'll do some growing season burns for Sericea lespedeza management. Summer burns are, they've got a lot less intensity to them. They're more, a lot of smoke. They don't move near as quickly because there's a lot more moisture in the fuel.
Kent Boucher (57:00.191)
Is that maybe a good way if you have like a really tough to burn site because there's buildings around or something like that? Could a summer burn be a good compromise there?
Ray Geroff (57:10.254)
If you got a lot of buildings around, depends on the smoke. I was going say, you're have a lot more smoke associated. I mean, yeah. So I mean, those growing season burns, they're going to help with control of a lot of your woodies and some of those invasive species. But you really got to also know what species you're managing for on your site. I hate to say that there's one thing that fits everything, because.
I mean, across all the sites that I cover, I each one has obviously different burn objectives. And so once you determine what your objectives are, you figure out what your burn timing is going to be. Sure.
Kent Boucher (57:52.238)
And can you like really hurt some high conservative or high conservation value Forbes?
Ray Geroff (58:00.014)
Yeah, so I mean there could be some annual Forbes out there that are state listed and on one of my sites that is the case and if you burned it off, I mean there's not many plants of it to start with. if you burn it off and you lose that seed production for that year, it could be detrimental to that species.
Kent Boucher (58:18.05)
Yeah, that's that's good to know. OK, fall burn will say maybe. When should we start fall September? We.
Ray Geroff (58:24.942)
We usually start our fall season in October. October, And so we'll-
Nicolas Lirio (58:29.74)
to get posts well do you guys don't really get a freeze until
Ray Geroff (58:33.484)
November, right. So I mean, October is the start of our fall burn season. Here you're not going to really be burning many woods at all in October unless it's really dry. But typically there's
Kent Boucher (58:44.174)
Or you just aren't seeing any deer and you need your buddy in the tree stand on the other side.
Ray Geroff (58:48.91)
I mean typically there's enough moisture carried through the ground flora or if there isn't the ground flora then it's usually if you have a nice healthy woodland you've got a nice ground cover there going on and you've got all the layers you got the ground layer the mid-story the canopy layers and so with that shade and that it holds enough moisture that it typically doesn't burn well. Your other thing is if you have degraded woodlands
They're filled with invasive exotic species such as honeysuckle and multiflora rose. And they're going to hold the moisture and their leaf litter doesn't burn very well. So it's still not going to burn very well in the woods. So we're only usually burning grassland sites at that point. And a lot of times if you have some woody encroachment going on that you want that lower humidities and stuff for, you can sometimes get that done. Or some of those prairie sites where we've had some of that timber mulching done.
A lot of times you can get those lower humidities and the fuel moisture is lower, you can get some of those to burn better. Once again, comes down to your objectives.
Kent Boucher (59:53.946)
So yeah, great great great great advice there and then winter takes us back to dormant season so yeah for that is it best if you're gonna do a dormant burn is it best to do it as early in the dormant season as possible or
Ray Geroff (01:00:09.506)
With as many sites as we have to burn, we burn them when they meet the prescription, when we can get a crew there. We have burned when there's snow on the ground. How'd that go? Once again, the site, it works great on some of those sites because we'll have some of those hill prairie opening areas or some of those like that where the sun's hitting and it melts the snow off of those areas. But the woods is still holding the snow. And so those might be areas where there's really steep terrain.
Kent Boucher (01:00:16.014)
Do you ever try and burn while there's snow on the ground?
Ray Geroff (01:00:39.278)
much equipment in there or you have lot of snags and issues or can't get a good fire break in. And so when the snow is on the ground it can be an excellent fire break. so you can light it then and it's not going to carry you through the woods but it'll burn out the prairie and help set back some of that succession. Which is also kind of like in the growing season. So some of those hill prairies will burn some of those in the growing season because we can't get good adequate control lines around it. And so
the woods around it's green enough and carry enough moisture that it won't burn or will burn very low intensity that we can control it on so we can go in and burn those out. Interesting. With a lot less effort.
Kent Boucher (01:01:20.0)
Yeah, yeah. This is all excellent. mean, this is like burning one on one. mean, just truly a great resource that you've put together here for for us personally, but also for our listeners and a lot of our customers who buy seed from us and ask questions about burning. One, I guess one last or I got just a couple of questions left here and I know you got to get back to work and we got to beat this tornado weather. But
Urban burns. we get we have a lot of clients who they don't own much land, but they wanted to make a difference where they can. So they put in a pollinator patch in their yard and they wonder about burning it. Do you got any tips for like, should they try and mow it off first before they burn? Should they do it during a certain time of the year?
Ray Geroff (01:02:13.646)
So I mean, obviously, you're going to have to consult your local laws, regulations, permit requirements, all those kind of things. you're going to in to make sure that they can legally burn it if they want to burn it and what's required. I mean, there's all kinds of HOAs. There's all kinds of ordinances and stuff associated. So that aside, saying that it is legal and they've got everything they need to burn it, you mentioned mowing it off first.
You could, but in a lot of cases, from what I've seen here in Illinois, those pollinator plantings are in amongst cool season grass. Like it's in their lawn, and then it just goes to that. And so a lot of times mowing that off seems to allow that cool season grass to obviously work in there a little easier. But to burn it off, you just, I mean, depending on if you're wanting those forbs, trying to burn it off sometimes in the fall, early fall, can be good because that can then
allow some of that plant matter to re-sprout a little bit even and green up. And then also your fall leaves and stuff can fall in there if you have trees around your yard. And it can provide good habitat for a lot of insects and stuff like that. Otherwise, waiting until spring once some of that stuff can emerge a little bit. Because a lot of times those are just little islands of biodiversity. And so there's not a whole lot of refugee around.
when you burn that up, that's all that's there. And if the species eggs or larvae are in there, then, because in most cases, obviously, you pollinator plantings, you don't want to burn up what you're trying to promote.
Kent Boucher (01:03:58.702)
That's a really good point.
Nicolas Lirio (01:03:59.938)
That's real. Do you have a rule of thumb or relative guidelines when you are creating your burn break?
Ray Geroff (01:04:04.439)
Ray Geroff (01:04:13.08)
So, I mean typically you want a break that is going to, down to bare mineral soil for most, in most parts. I mean that makes it the easiest, easiest break. When I'm doing woodland burns, anymore we try to make sure it's mostly ATV accessible just for efficiency purposes and it is also safer when you can get more equipment in and out of a place for containment. But those, so usually those are around six foot wide.
And we'll blow them out with a leaf blower or blower mounted on an ATV or something like that And then we will back burn into those to make to widen it out with black So, I mean even though our burn break is only so wide we will increase the width of that by our ignition techniques and and letting that fire back in and create more black before you ever would have a head fire or anything else coming towards that line so and that's the same with a prairie so you may have a
Due to the heat that comes off of lot of tall grass prairies, you've got a six foot tall prairie grass field and you mow a six foot wide path down it, and that's gonna be your burn break, a lot of times the tops as that fire goes will burn the tops of that grass off and it'll fall over. And so you gotta be monitoring it, because if you don't make it wide enough that could fall over and actually start the other side of the prairie on fire. Plus the amount of heat and the embers on that small of a break is low.
are as very high as that you're gonna have them going across. So usually one and a half times your flame length is a good rule of thumb, but you can have your brake be narrower if you're going to build your brake using black as well. And you can effectively do that in the fuel type that you're in. Interesting. yeah, mean, and in prairies, mean, a lot of times people are like, well, I mowed a brake in. Well, when did you mow that brake in?
Nicolas Lirio (01:05:58.254)
Thank
Ray Geroff (01:06:06.174)
And then what resources do you have to hold it in there? Because just because you mowed it in doesn't mean it won't burn across. That thatch that's there could burn across. Even the grass that's still there that you mowed off could still burn across that break. So if you don't have other equipment there to help manage that, or depending on what size it is, mean, whether it's a machine with a spray unit or blowers or just personnel with flappers or whatever you're using, scale really depends on what you got there.
In a prairie, if I'm burning a tall grass prairie, I've got a six foot mower deck that I would mow them in with and I'll usually mow three passes with it to get roughly 18 feet or so. Because that gives enough space to light it and have the ATV and personnel have a place that they can stand far enough away to get out of the main part of the heat if they need to. But it's still...
If you had a head fire hit that break, it's not going to stop it. So that's why you have to build that black as you go.
Kent Boucher (01:07:06.584)
That makes sense. Well, we have one last question for you. If there was one thing that you could change about how people, what they understand about or how they view burning, what would that be?
Nicolas Lirio (01:07:07.374)
That's fantastic.
Ray Geroff (01:07:21.582)
Well, properly applied prescribed fire is one of our most effective, cost efficient, time efficient methods of setting back succession and promoting healthy prairies and woodlands here in Illinois. And that would be what I would want them to realize.
Kent Boucher (01:07:44.982)
Yeah, I think that's great. I think it's getting there. I think people are getting more and more on board with it. I kind of roughly remember when I started to take notice of a lot of burning going on in the landscape. It's probably like maybe 15, maybe 20 years ago, I started to kind of notice it. But now, mean, every spring, you just see the smoke on the horizon. Neil, I guess I meant to ask you that. Are you amazed that?
States just allow any old local yokel to go out there and drop a match and burn his CRP or burn his pasture off or prairie planting.
Ray Geroff (01:08:28.974)
Am I amazed that that's a lie?
Kent Boucher (01:08:30.702)
Maybe I didn't phrase that right. mean, to me it just seems such a risky thing where so much property could be damaged, life could be...
Ray Geroff (01:08:42.606)
You're right. Improperly prescribed fire can cause major issues. could have, especially in Illinois, there's been very few large wildfires that have crossed many, many, boundaries. Here we've got a lot of, obviously we're very agricultural dominated. We have a lot of ag fields, a lot of roads. mean, you look at an aerial view of Illinois, it's like a checkerboard of roads all around it. Now, there's fires that will jump roads. They will cross roads.
relatively easily, especially with tall grass prairie or corn stubble burning. for the most part, that's why I think that here we don't, we do have issues with burning and we have field fires all the time, but they don't go large scale. And I think that if there was more large scale issues like that, I think you would see more regulations put in.
Kent Boucher (01:09:35.086)
have have a burn permit or something
Ray Geroff (01:09:37.582)
In Illinois to burn you're supposed to have an approved burn plan and in Illinois Environmental Protection Agency open burning permit.
Kent Boucher (01:09:46.702)
That's crazy. We don't have to have any of that. just gotta call. It's just advised that you call the local authorities. like, hey, I'm burning. So don't send the Calvary if you see.
Ray Geroff (01:09:55.222)
Yeah, no here in Illinois for private landowners. That's what they're supposed to have but the lion's share of landowners I don't even know if they know they're supposed to have that. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
Kent Boucher (01:10:05.516)
Yeah, that's interesting. Well, Nick, you want to wrap this one up here?
Nicolas Lirio (01:10:09.43)
So we're going to beat this tornado. I mean, this.
Kent Boucher (01:10:12.408)
days. know and this was such a great conversation.
Nicolas Lirio (01:10:15.63)
I really enjoyed, I learned a bunch. I really appreciate you coming out already. That was really cool. Well, we came out here, but you stopped what you were doing for an hour and a half to hang out with us. And that's not a small deal, especially during this busy season. But I mean, you really, really know what you're talking about and we appreciate it because conservation happens with people like you, know, people who have spent their life learning about it and then implementing it. And as everyone here knows, conservation happens one mind at a time.
