I know this has been discussed before to some degree, but if we wanted to pay someone to do a prescribed fire, would they even bother with a measly 20 acres?

Forestry department would probably be your only option

Yes, they'd do it. Your biggest expense will be getting fire lanes dozed if they're not already. If you've got lanes intact it'll be a lot cheaper.

Good luck getting the forestry department to come out. I called and called and called, finally after a couple of weeks got a call back. Said he would call me in the next day or two and come by. That was about 8 months ago. We will be using a Timber Management company, hopefully to handle ours this spring.

If you got firelanes in place why not do it yourself
Call get a permit, some diesel fuel mixed 80-20 with gasoline,pump sprayer, a match and have at
Or alabama forestry commission
Afc did our lanes and we do the prescribed burns as needed and this year is gone be needed

Recommending someone with no fire experience to burn their own place is disastrous advice. That’s lead to MANY wildfires and court decisions that didn’t end favororably for the one who lit the torch. I’m all for private landowners burning and encourage it with many I work with. Turning them loose with no training or understanding of fire behavior is not good.

This is good advise. Ive burnt off several fields before planting, im talking about 2-5acres, not a big fire. It is a very helpless feeling when the wind shifts or if the fire escalates a little quicker than expected. I couldnt imagine a big fire in the woods that gets out of control. Theres alot of ways a man could die in that situation, not to mention the property damage.

Yeah...I'll be sure to explain to my family that the 100+ year old house burnt down because I wanted the deer to have some fresh briars to nibble on.

What company did you use?

Alabama forestry commission. never had a problem getting them to burn small tracts in SW alabama.

So before the forestry commission comes out, I should go ahead and make some nice fire lanes? I have some small ones, but nothing like I think it would require for one to actually try to burn the property.

If you can disc around the area 10-12’ wide that should be plenty

If you disk and they approve, they should be able to schedule the burn as a one and done. If not, they will have to schedule fire lane prep and then schedule the burn. Might be done at the same time but not always.

My Chiropractor lost a plane and other things including his house from his neighbor attempting to burn off a field.

I've been on burns at Redstone where sage grass fields produced 30 ft flames. I have pic somewhere.

I've been in on over 15,000 acres of burns and I still get nervous when we start lighting. Even well panned burns can go awry. If I had a dollar every time the humidity was forecast to be in the mid 30's yet hit the upper teens or low 20's, those days will scare the crap out of you. Throw in some winds higher than forecast and it gets real quickly.

I've seen things this year new to me.