And it is burn proof? Really? Get real.
I never said the property was burn proof, I said my house wouldn't burn because of the way the property is managed. That you would try to put words into my mouth is strong indication that you know you've got your foot in yours.
The fire would come through here, but it would not be a big deal as long as I take down the bay trees across the gulley and then start the backfire, as I said. The fire perimeter is not perfect, but it gets better every year. As part of that forest rehab project, today I was loading and splitting some of the ten cords of oak. This fall I'll be completing a fuel break I started about fifteen years ago, as well as a firebreak (not the same thing) for a controlled burn planned for next year.
One reason veg management here is different than for you is that the conifers here are mostly redwood, not pine. Place and size the fuel breaks correctly and keep the root-crown sprouts under control and a fire in a thinned redwood stand won't support a crown fire. The same is true of pine, but the parameters are different.
As for the rest of the vegetation, the configuration of these hills is resistant to high winds, although because it's so steep fire updrafts can be impressive. That means keeping the brush in woodlands to more fire retardant species such as Heteromeles arbitufolia, and managing the chaparral in lateral bands across slopes to preclude development of said updraft. At that point, one can then burn the chaparral from the top down as a backfire, fog the column if necessary, and it won't take the house. The fire will die under the canopy at the bottom because the groudcovers are sedges and ferns. I've burned far more serious fuel accumulations on that slope and had no problem.
When I consulted the CDF Vegetation Management Specialist for a controlled burn planned for the next year or two, he came to the property and said that the trick would be to get it to burn, not because there is no vegetation but because it's so lush. I'll have to chop much of the vegetation and let it dry so that it will burn. The reason I'm planning to torch it is to then stay on top of the weed irruption for the next several years, thus cleaning out the weed seed bank. As I convert the canopy vegetation on that slope from Eriodictyon californica to Sambucus mexicana, the fuel load will become easier to deal with.
The big difference here is that so much of this land breeds PURELY native. That means the mycorrhizae work correctly and keep that low vegetation green all summer, because the exotics (particularly grasses) aren't screwing things up with their aggressive chemistry (interestingly, I have some "annual" plants that now survive through the summer, so the botanists may have some thinking to do). Most of my grasses here stay green all summer too, despite weeks of hundred degree heat, a month over 90, and no rain for over five months. I do mow the grasses twice a year to take out the thatch, remove the dry fruiting stems, and keep them short. Harvesting them also helps with summer dormancy.
The reason the grasses stay green over summer here is that there are no annual grasses to dry them out and plenty of small native annual forbs to provide the nitrogen that mitigates drought stress in grasses (the grasses provide phosphorus back to the legumes via the micorrhiza). There simply isn't another grassland in the entire Central Coastal mountains of California that has a full complement of native forbs as this place does. It's that rare, and I'm doing factorial array experiments to make it better. By contrast, the largest remnant untouched native grassland in the Bay Area is less than one acre, and it's infested with weeds between the grass bunches. As a result, science has very little idea of how a native system functions with a full cohort of annuals, especially because allelopathic and hormonal signals from exotics screw up native plant behavior. That's why those professors came here; they've never even seen such a place.
The three acres of thinning I did in the last year is getting pretty bold because of the weed response, but I'm using that biomass to make charcoal as a soil amendment for the grasslands. Looks like I'll have about six yards of finished product from last year. To that I'll add a mix of bone meal and trace minerals to replace what was lost when the place was terraced for an orchard some 90 years ago. The idea is tot get the charcoal to retain the minerals in such a sandy soil. The trick will be getting it incorporated without tilling. So there will be a heavy mulching treatment augmented with nitrogen to get the worms to start the infiltration. I may even add an actinomycete inoculation.
I'll bet you're wondering why I'm talking about soil management. The reason is that it is effectively part of fire management. Got it yet? Proper land management is a serious business. It's intellectually, physically, and financially demanding. This urban myth that pretending it will all be OK if we just leave it alone is to deny that it has been an anthropogenic landscape for the last 10,000 years. To remove that management and expect the system to "know" what to do or that whatever happens is "Natural" is just as destructive and wasteful as letting your house burn down every fifteen years. The land benefits from management an there is a lot of historic damage to undo. Nor can we ever return to how it once was managed, among other reasons because we don't eat what it produces.
I'm pinging two freepers who've been here. They don't post often so it may be a while before they get here to attest to what I've said. In the mean time I have this to say to you, It's quite apparently high time you got real with the land around you.