Seeding by helicopter.

Part of recovering from the fire includes reseeding the mountainside.

This is the base camp of the reseeding crew.  

You can see it is near Dave and Linda Shepherd's house. 

A close up shows the fuel truck and the trailer that hauls the seed spreader and straw nets. 

The mechanic is checking everything out before take off.  He said this is a
1964 model. The best model ever! It guzzles 80 gallons of fuel per hour.

He was super thorough.  The chopper comes back every 1 1/2

 hours to fuel and the mechanic checks it all out again. 

This is the seed spreader.  It holds 1100 pounds of a variety of grass seeds and works 

much like a HUGE broadcast spreader. It hangs underneath the helicopter when at work. 

The seeding process was completed 10/8/14, one 40 foot swath at a time.

This the the pilot getting ready to take off after fueling. (10/9/14) Notice the big net.  

He is now taking nets full of shredded straw and dropping it onto the seeded area.  

This stack of straw is small compared to the one in Nephi Canyon that is being used today.  (10/9/14)

ADDENDUM!

Malea wondered how they got the straw in the net soooo.......

.........first chance, Dad/Grandpa got some pictures. This is the straw shredding machine.

This the first still shot showing how the mountain of shredded straw gets into the net.

Still shot number 2 suggests it is just one load at a time.

Still shot number three.  Each net will hold three of these BIG fork loads.
  The turn-around time on the helicopter is about 7 minutes.
The group crew has to have the next net spread,
 loaded and ready to hook up when it returns.

The helicopter can pick up 3000 pounds of straw in each net.
So what happens if the net is too heavy?
 The pilot has to hover while the ground crew takes some of the straw out!