Quote Originally Posted by Rorschach View Post
I suspect he was doing that to stop the fire rather than save the crops. His house could have been at the other end of that field.
This ^^^

To me, it looks like a harvested wheat or other grain crop field. In the Willamette valley it would have been grass seed. In any case, a field burning like that used to be a common sight here. It clears the field and provides nutrients for the next crop. Now a days, it's not as common as air quality matters more now. Plus a lot of smoke from a field burn drifting across the interstate caused a large multi-car pileup.