Kendall County Burn Ban: What to Do With Brush You Can't Burn

If you own property anywhere around Boerne, you already know the rhythm. The burn pile grows through the winter, you wait for a decent day to light it, and the county drops a burn ban the week you were finally ready.

Kendall County lifted its burn ban in late January 2026, reinstated it on February 18, and lifted it again on April 7. Three changes in ten weeks. That’s normal here, and it’s a real problem if your plan for brush disposal is “burn it eventually.”

This guide covers what a ban actually restricts, and what to do with the pile when you can’t light it.

What a Kendall County burn ban covers

When the Commissioners Court has a ban in effect, the order prohibits outdoor burning of trash, debris, yard waste, trees, brush, and paper.

What stays legal during a ban:

• Burning solely for recreational or ceremonial purposes — a fire pit or a campfire
• Noncommercial preparation of food — grilling and barbecue

What doesn’t: the burn pile. Which is exactly the thing most Hill Country property owners need to get rid of.

Violation is a Class C misdemeanor with a fine up to $500. And the fine is the small risk. If a fire escapes during a declared ban, you’re looking at civil liability for whatever it damages, and you’re doing it without the defense of having acted lawfully.

Bans change often, so check before you burn. Kendall County posts current status on its website, and the Fire Marshal’s office will tell you over the phone. Don’t rely on what a neighbor told you last month.

Why this matters more here than most places

The Hill Country has a specific vegetation problem, and it drives most of the brush people around Boerne need to get rid of.

Ashe juniper — cedar — has spread aggressively across Central Texas over the past century, largely as a consequence of fire suppression and land use changes. It crowds out grasses, cuts forage production, and pulls down water availability on a property.

It’s also extremely flammable. Cedar burns hot and fast, and dense stands create what fire people call ladder fuels — continuous vegetation that carries a ground fire up into the tree canopy, where it becomes something no one can stop.

Which produces the situation a lot of Kendall County landowners find themselves in:

1. You need to clear cedar to reduce wildfire risk around your home
2. Clearing produces an enormous volume of highly flammable brush
3. The conditions that make clearing urgent — hot, dry, windy — are exactly the conditions that trigger a burn ban
4. So the brush sits in a pile next to the house, which is worse than where it started

A brush pile stacked near a structure during fire season is a genuine hazard, not just an eyesore.

Defensible space, briefly

If you’re clearing for wildfire protection rather than just tidiness, the zones that matter:

0–5 feet from the structure — the immediate zone. The most critical area on the entire property. Wind-driven embers land here, collect, and ignite the building. This zone should be as close to non-combustible as you can make it. No cedar, no woodpile against the wall, no dry leaf litter in the corners.

5–30 feet — the intermediate zone. Break up continuous fuel. Thin the trees, separate the canopies, remove the ladder fuels underneath.

30–100 feet — the extended zone. Thinning rather than clearing. The goal is slowing a fire and dropping it out of the canopy, not creating bare ground.

Thinning Ashe juniper and live oak in these zones — what’s often called a shaded fuel break — is standard practice in Central Texas land stewardship. Every acre of it generates brush that has to go somewhere.

Kendall County sits squarely in the wildland-urban interface, and it keeps expanding. Every new subdivision pushed out into the cedar adds homes that depend on defensible space.

Where the brush actually goes

Realistic options once burning is off the table:

Forestry mulching. A machine grinds the cedar in place and leaves the mulch on the ground, where it reduces erosion and feeds the soil. Genuinely the best answer for large-acreage clearing, and worth pricing out if you’re doing serious work. It doesn’t help with the pile you’ve already stacked, or with material near a structure where you don’t want a fuel bed left behind.

Hauling it yourself. Workable for a trailer load or two. Less workable for what a real clearing job produces, and Hill Country brush is awkward, scratchy, springy material to load and unload by hand repeatedly.

A roll-off dumpster on the property. Load it once, at your own pace, and it goes away. This is the straightforward answer for defensible-space work around a home, for a big trimming season, and for anyone who has a pile they’d rather not stare at until the next burn window.

Sizing a dumpster for brush

Brush behaves differently from construction debris, and it’s worth knowing how before you book.

It’s bulky and light. You’ll fill the box long before you approach a weight limit. That’s the opposite of roofing or concrete, where weight is the binding constraint.

It doesn’t pack well. Limbs bridge and leave air pockets. Cutting branches down to shorter lengths before loading makes a real difference — you can easily fit a third more material in the same dumpster.

Green wood is heavier than it looks. Freshly cut cedar holds a lot of water. A dumpster of green brush weighs considerably more than the same container of material that’s been drying for six months. Not usually enough to matter, but worth mentioning if you’re clearing a lot at once.

Practical sizing:

• 15 yard — a residential lot’s trimming, a season’s accumulation, storm limb cleanup, light thinning
• 30 yard — defensible space work around a house, clearing an acre or more, a large stacked pile
• Multiple pulls or a swap — larger acreage projects, where we cycle containers as you work

Our yard waste and tree limb guide covers the Texas rules on vegetation in roll-offs in more detail.

A few loading notes

Keep brush loads clean. Don’t mix in bagged trash, old fencing, or construction debris if you can avoid it. A clean brush load is simpler at the disposal end.

Cut to length. Anything much over four or five feet wastes space. A chainsaw pass before loading pays for itself.

Load heavy and low first. Trunk sections and thick limbs on the bottom, brushy material on top.

Stay under the rails. Nothing above the top edge of the container — it can’t be tarped or legally hauled otherwise. See loading a dumpster efficiently for the rest.

Timing your clearing

Some seasons work better than others in Kendall County:

Late fall through winter is the best window. Cooler working conditions, lower fire danger, and bans are less likely — though as 2026 showed, February bans absolutely happen.

Late winter into early spring, before the heat arrives and before nesting season complicates tree work.

Summer is when it’s most urgent and least pleasant. High fire danger, bans likely, and brutal working conditions. If you’re doing defensible space work in July because you’ve looked at the forecast and gotten nervous, that’s a completely reasonable reason — just plan on a container, because you almost certainly won’t be allowed to burn.

What we do

We deliver across Boerne, Fair Oaks Ranch, Comfort, Bulverde, Spring Branch, Kendalia, and Welfare — see our Hill Country area guide for the full footprint.

For brush and clearing work:

• Same-day delivery when a truck is free
• Boards under the wheels, including on caliche and gravel drives
• Placement on ranch property, not just paved driveways
• 7-day rental with extensions, because clearing takes as long as it takes
• Swaps on larger jobs

Rural Hill Country placement has its own quirks — thin soil over limestone, caliche drives, cattle guards, and low oak limbs over the approach. A photo or a quick video of the access route before delivery day saves everyone trouble.

If you’ve got a pile you can’t burn, call (903) 806-4181 or book a dumpster for Boerne. Tell us roughly how much brush and what the driveway looks like and we’ll size it from there.