Smoke Gets in Your Eyes in Faribault

People could smell smoke all over Faribault on Wednesday, and Fire Chief Dusty Dienst informed KDHL it was a controlled burn at the city's compost site.

The site is located behind the water treatment plant and has been closed since the flooding last fall. Dienst said they are trying to get the piles of leaves and brush down so they can accept more when spring cleanup moves into full swing in the next couple of weeks.

It brought back memories for me when I was a kid growing up in Spring Valley, Minn. I don't know if Faribault was like this, but in Spring Valley there was no garbage hauling service when I was a kid. Even people in town had a burning barrel and disposed of their garbage in that fashion. In the fall, the smell of burning leaves was all over the city because virtually everybody raked leaves into a pile and burned them.

Bigger items like old couches or mattresses and things we did transport to the dump, and I used to join many kids in my neighborhood in going there to shoot rats.

I remember when garbage service was first mandated, my dad complaining about big government interfering in our lives.