The cold, windy and blustery day didn’t keep more than 50 people from participating in part of the preservation of the prairie Saturday — the annual burning of the range. Last year, the event was canceled because of snow.
The event, Flames in the Flint Hills, located on Grandview Ranch on the Chase/Lyon County line, is put on each year by Jan Jantzen, who runs the agritourism business Kansas Flint Hills Adventures.
This year marked the event’s first sell-out crowd, Jantzen said. He started the event with some friends. It grew into an agritourism business when Jantzen realized out-of-state people wanted to participate. Now, he opens his ranch each year with a maximum of 50 guests to keep it manageable.
Jantzen told the crowd he still had a waiting list for the event, which included entertainment, a camp fire, chuckwagon dinner and, of course, the guests had the opportunity to light the actual prairie fire and watch the flames burn last year’s growth. Jantzen said he might expand the event into two or three days to accommodate more guests. He said there is plenty of land available for the event.
The event drew people this year from as far away as California, and one family there is from Paris but lives in Leawood.
“I’ve seen your addresses,” Jantzen told the group before the daytime burn. “You’re an amazing and interesting group of people.”
Jantzen said the event not only serves as a tourist attraction but many of the visitors have become good friends with the tallgrass prairie and the Flint Hills, supporting preservation efforts.
Before allowing the guests to strike a match he explained the history of the burning of the prairie and safety procedures. Jantzen said before humans, the prairie would burn naturally as a result of lightning strikes. When the American Indian came, the burns started by campfires and other factors. He went on to explain the sediment left behind millions of years ago when the ocean receded makes the land really rich, therefore making it the best grazing ground in the world. To preserve that jewel, the grass must be burned to make way for new grass and prevent cedar trees from taking over the land.
“If you don’t burn, it will be taken over by Eastern Red Cedars,” he said. “You have to graze it and burn it to keep it.”
When it came to the actual burn, Jantzen said it was important for everybody to stay safe.
“It’s important to me that everybody who came with hair and eyebrows leave with hair and eyebrows,” he said. “It’s going to be hotter than you think.”
He also told the group to remember two colors when burning the grass — black and blue. He said if the fire was coming at them to run for either of those colors. The black is the grass that is already burned off and the blue was the pond located behind them.
“If you can’t find something black, head for something blue — the pond,” he said as the group chuckled.
Following the history and safety talk, guests were placed upwind from the fire and were allowed to light it. He cautioned them not to get in front of it because the high winds would cause the fire to burn really fast. And it did — a few acres burned in less than three minutes, setting a new ranch record, Jantzen said.
It didn’t take long for the grass to catch as guests lit and drug the fire. The grass caught swiftly and flames licked the air, sweeping across the field in a matter of seconds. As the heat rose, participants backed off. Bertrand and Anne deMontille said the heat surprised them. The deMontilles have lived in Leawood for about four years and have never seen anything like the Flint Hills, they said.
“It is a natural piece of art,” Anne deMontille said. “I was surprised by the heat coming out.”
deMontille said she now understands why range fires can kill people.
“The wind was very high,” she said.
The deMontilles were there with their four children, who are 16, 12, 9 and 7. They wanted to see what it was like to live in America and chose Leawood. They ended up at Jantzen’s ranch because they were looking for a multi-day adventure in the Flint Hills. When they didn’t find that, they chose to attend the Flames in the Flint Hills.
“I love the atmosphere,” Anne deMontille said.
“We loved it,” Bertrand deMontille said as his kids played and sorted through things in the freshly burned grass. deMontille added that the fire was very impressive to watch. “The noise is great. I loved the noise.”