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Information sourced from an article published by Steve Fransen and Ned Zaugg, Washington State University The recent flooding in Boulder County requires close monitoring of stored hay for signs of spontaneous combustion. Dry hay (stored at 15 percent moisture or less) is safe for long-term storage. However, if the hay has become wet the quality has been permanently changed and there is an increased potential of a fire hazard from spontaneous combustion. As microbial  organisms grow in wet hay they produce heat while drying out the surrounding surfaces of the hay for energy. More drying surfaces produces more microbial growth and different types of microbes live and die as the internal bale temperature climbs. When the bale temperature reaches about 150 Fº the hay is on a one-way street and going the wrong direction! The larger the haystack and the more densely packed the hay is the longer it may take to show signs of internal bale burning. Internal bale temperature may take several weeks before reaching 150 Fº, but from this point on more heat resistant bacteria start a process of chemical change that rapidly increases temperatures to the point of spontaneous combustion.Chemical reactions and microbial growth in hay occur because of the change in availability of moisture, oxygen, and pressure to create heat to the point of ignition and fire. Early warning signs are: Steam rising from bale surfaces and condensing on the roof and eves of the barn. Often molds will start to grow on all these surfaces too. An acrid, hot, tobacco

By Kay Coyte Published July 22, 2013 Washington Post This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, the day an agreement was signed to end the fighting in the peninsula now divided into North and South Korea. On Saturday, men and women who fought in Korea will be honored in Washington. But the day before, another kind of leatherneck (a nickname for a Marine) will be honored: a little red horse. Her name was Sergeant Reckless, and the Marines “drafted” her to pack ammunition to the battlefield and carry the wounded back to safety. But here’s the thing: She did it on her own. She kept climbing those jagged hills even after she was wounded. The soldiers came to love her so much that they brought her home from Korea after the war to live at Camp Pendleton in California. On Friday, “Operation Reckless” at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico will feature the unveiling of a life-size statue of Sergeant Reckless, a real war horse. “She was one of them, and that’s why they’re honoring her,” said Robin Hutton, of Ventura, California, who has written a book on the mare to be published this year. “She wasn’t a horse; she was a Marine.” You might think that Sergeant Reckless was the inspiration for last year’s movie “War Horse.” But that was based on a children’s fiction book about an English farm horse on the front lines of World War I. The story of Sergeant Reckless is just as epic, and all true. Lieutenant Colonel