I'm a firestarter

Late spring is bonfire season out here in the sticks. It is the time of year when we rural types - even we half-baked, lily-livered ones who have washed up from the city - set fire to enormous piles of dead wood, felled trees and sundry vegetation that have been building up since last summer, or perhaps even the summer before.

- Greg Dixon

It's not a thing that one does lightly. If it were as simple as putting a few branches through a shredder, you would. But when you have, as we had, a pile the size of a bus from shelter belts being trimmed, a pile that holds at least a tonne of material, there's not a lot choice in the matter: you burn it.

Picking the right moment to set your pile off requires a complex calculation involving wild variables and frantic guesstimates. My brain was not made for such stuff but has slowly learnt to dealt with it over the years.

The first box to be ticked in your checklist of getting shot of your burn pile is the easiest for the amateur: you must burn before the open fire season ends for the year.

In Wairarapa, this season runs roughly from early winter into late spring. There's usually a restricted fire period in early-to-mid summer, which is closed altogether in mid-to-late summer when our fair region turns drier than a dead dingo's donga.