Bizarre - Field Caught on Fire While Plowing

The 140 has a top side muffler. Nothing was on fire on the tractor. I'm stumped as to what caused the brush fire next to the furrow. The wheels were slipping big time as I juggled the touch-control levers to keep the tractor going forward while keeping the plow down deep. Can a slipping drive tire create enough friction to set dried grass/stalks on fire? Do you reckon it was two rocks being ground under the wheel setting off sparks? Anyone seen this happen while plowing under heavy load?

Now you know. Cigarettes are dangerous!!

On the first morning back, an excavator started 6 fires travelling 500'. Those were started from tracks of the machine coming in contact with rocks. That probably created far more preasure between rock and steel than your 140 with plow would do.

We had a stubble fire start exactly this way at a plow day late last summer.

It returned me to my youth getting that evergreen limb and beating out the fire. We used to burn off fields and ditch banks. We slapped with pine boughs to keep the fire from getting onto the neighbor's land.

But any time of the year it"s very dry, it is common for a mower blade to hit a rock and cause a spark which ignites dry grass...happens every late summer somewhere in our region during haymaking. You see it on our local news two, three times a year.

I don"t see why a plow blade couldn"t do the same thing under the right circumstances, although it"s much less likely. A mower blade has so much more velocity. But then, the plow blade hits more rocks...

But I"ve also seen sparks fly from old tractor and lawn mower mufflers after dark. These wouldn"t have much heat in them, although their temperature is high enough to make them incandescent. I"ve got to think they"d still be more likely to start a fire than a spark thrown from a plow.