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When we first moved to our farm in New England there was so much woody debris in the neglected pastures we decided that a big bonfire of it would be a good idea. It was February, lots of snow, we didn't know about the designated burn days etc that the town had, but it was almost certainly okay anyway.
It was a huge amount of work dragging dead branches through the snow, and then trying to heave them on to a giant fire that singed your eyebrows off if the wind changed while you were struggling with the darn branch. Generally unpleasant, and then the next summer it transpired that the horses loved those burn sites and would make special trips to roll there and get filthy with soot and ash.
Was the last time we did that. Now we pile brush on to the loader of the tractor and haul into the woods, where there's a hill of brush that we just leave there to be animal habitat as it slowly breaks down. Works a lot better for us, for the air, saves labor and is ecological.
My chickens would love my fire pit when I had them. Ash is a key ingredient in soap, I wonder if they help keep down bugs on them?
The drought/heatwave we went through last summer was hard on our trees and bushes.
Most of our property is forest.
We burn the fallen branches and stuff like that.
I’m actually going to try to burn today in the rain.
We have company coming Sunday and the pile is getting larger.
Our house area isn’t all that large so we use a tumbler composter for the lawns, kitchen debris and stuff like that.
Sometimes I dump a bunch of tall cut weeds into the coop and the chickens just love it.
The drought/heatwave we went through last summer was hard on our trees and bushes.
Most of our property is forest.
We burn the fallen branches and stuff like that.
I’m actually going to try to burn today in the rain.
We have company coming Sunday and the pile is getting larger.
Our house area isn’t all that large so we use a tumbler composter for the lawns, kitchen debris and stuff like that.
Sometimes I dump a bunch of tall cut weeds into the coop and the chickens just love it.
You might get a mulcher/woodchipper and send it into the chicken run/coop. It will decompose in there, and be a good environment for the chickens to scratch/dig in, and find bugs.
I used two have two compost piles next to each other for leaves and yard waste/vegetable waste. However, my old silver maples dropped so many leaves that I burned them in the VDOT ditch each fall. It cleared the ditch of weeds and reduced the leaves to ash that I then added to the compost pile as well. As long as we weren't having fire warnings the county didn't care. I just kept the hose charged and ready and a heavy metal rake at hand to rake the leaves into the flames. Honestly, I enjoyed the immediate clean-up it provided. I wish I could have burned my line of zebra plants, but they would have melted the street asphalt and probably set my clapboard garage on fire as well.
Many years ago I learned the hard way to NEVER use gasoline to start a burn pile. Relax, no injuries.
My father in law and I were clearing brambels, branches and dead leaves from a windfall and I had poured what I thought was a small quantity of gasoline over the pile. FIL hands me a small box of matches and says "Light 'er up."
What I had failed to take into account was the pile of leaves on top and gasoline has flammable vapors. Leaves on top of pile trap vapors. (See where this is going ?) So I strike a match, extend my longer than average arm and drop said lit match into previously mentioned brush pile, and then there was a very, very LOUD KABOOM!! and next thing you know smoldering leaves are raining down on us and FIL is standing there with the silliest grin I'd ever seen him do, laughing his a$$ off. Then the women come running out of the house screaming as if the world just ended "All the windows shook! Is everyone alright ?" and "What the %@&& did you do? "That sounded like a BOMB!" FIL & I are laughing like two kids who just found a pack of firecrackers. FIL says to me "That's a good one! That was fun !" I look around checking to see if I had started a brush fire and everything was out. I grabbed the garden hose and sprayed the area just to be on the safe side. That day was talked about for the next couple of years. ...and yes, it was fun.
A couple of weeks later there was a gentleman in the local news who had poured gasoline on a burning brush pile and the flames traveled up to his gas can. He survived but let's just say his lesson was more painfully learned.
That's when I learned NEVER use gasoline to light off a brush pile. If you need to use a liquid firestarter, use diesel. It's not EXPLOSIVE like gasoline.
We have 19 acres, probably 12 of it wooded. We often have entire trees we need to do something with. We're not going to do 20 new garden boxes a year. We're not that big into gardening.
Letting debris sit for a year where they are good habitat and cover for little critters, and then burning them, is not a bad way to handle it, IMHO. We only have so much energy to give to cleaning up storm damage.
When we first moved to our farm in New England there was so much woody debris in the neglected pastures we decided that a big bonfire of it would be a good idea. It was February, lots of snow, we didn't know about the designated burn days etc that the town had, but it was almost certainly okay anyway.
It was a huge amount of work dragging dead branches through the snow, and then trying to heave them on to a giant fire that singed your eyebrows off if the wind changed while you were struggling with the darn branch. Generally unpleasant, and then the next summer it transpired that the horses loved those burn sites and would make special trips to roll there and get filthy with soot and ash.
Was the last time we did that. Now we pile brush on to the loader of the tractor and haul into the woods, where there's a hill of brush that we just leave there to be animal habitat as it slowly breaks down. Works a lot better for us, for the air, saves labor and is ecological.
This is what we do too. Used to burn brush but now we pile it in an unused part of our woods where it can degrade. Other stuff goes into compost, leaves get blown into the surrounding woods.
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Relax, no injuries. 
