Odd, I live in a rural area as well. When I cross the state line into the new york state back country, I literally see garbage piles in some people's front yards. Like they don't wanna pay for garbage collection, so it piles up in their yard for months until they burn it all. The fire dept are all volunteers and don't just randomly show up to a fire unless someone calls it in. We burn wood in the yard for leisure or to get rid of brush, but im more of a get garbage to its place kind of guy.
We have no garbage pickup in the county, we haul it to one of four collection areas. Those cost $140/year plus about $7/100lbs, so no doubt some more thrifty neighbors are burning household trash instead, but I just burn slash and take household trash to the dumpsters.
There's a high fire risk in this area and smoke watchers will report it, and the VFD gets dispatched. They don't respond individually.
