Education Commons^™

G77-338 Open Burning (Revised March 1984), Donald E. Westover

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: Historical Materials

People have been using fire in their cleanup chores for hundreds of years. One of the most common reasons for burning on the farm and in the city alike, has been to dispose of leaves and garden residues in the spring and fall of the year. Another common practice has been to burn tree limbs and stumps, fence posts, even old haystacks on the farm. Open burning has been done on a variety of scales, from jobs as small as burning the day's trash in the backyard burning barrel to jobs as large as burning wheat stubble after harvest.