I did like Highbeam did and used one of those HF weed burners. Since I was close to the house I ran an extension cord out with a regular old box fan. You can see the fan on the back patio in the picture. I had most of the pile covered for a couple of years with an old ratty tarp that is now in the dump. I tried to start the pile outside of the tarp covered area but didn't get anywhere. Once I pointed the weed burner and fan on the dried area under the tarp (I removed the tarp first) it started right up. I just had to push things together once in while to keep things going. The last time I burned a pile a couple of years ago I used a couple gallons of diesel fuel to get things going. But the diesel gets all over and it smell like ahhh diesel fuel. The loggers will use a thick kraft paper and put that over the pile weighed down with small logs for a few months to get things underneath dried out and then they light it. It works. I don't know if it is special paper or not but it looks like brown kraft paper. Using tires is a big no no here although I've come across some very suspicious black smoke at the start of some slash pile burning.
I had a charged garden hose on either side of the pile which never got used and a shovel. One of the neat things about getting the burn permit from the fire department was that right there on the permit it said I had to have a tractor with a front end loader. Of course I had to show Mrs. Twigpig that part of the permit.
I had a charged garden hose on either side of the pile which never got used and a shovel. One of the neat things about getting the burn permit from the fire department was that right there on the permit it said I had to have a tractor with a front end loader. Of course I had to show Mrs. Twigpig that part of the permit. 
