Once a year, each year, Nicholas Lindholm waits for the perfect spring day.

There's hardly any wind. Usually, you know, the sun is out. It's kind of warm. It's not very humid.

When the weather's just right, he gathers a small group of friends and family in a blueberry patch.

I typically have a handful of people who have done this before,

and they like it so much as I do, that come and do it.

But then I usually have one or two people who have never done it.

They all donned leather boots and cotton clothing.

No sandals or synthetic materials.

Lindholm himself wears a full firefighter's costume. The followers all wear spray

packs filled with water, but Linholm's spray pack holds something else.

Have a 50-50 mix of diesel and kerosene in about a gallon-sized drip torch.

After a group meeting, the crew gathers behind Lindholm

and sets every inch of the field on fire.

This is the step in the cycle where death turns to life.

I'm Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we're on a farm in Pinobscot, Maine, visiting one of the last wild blueberry growers who burns this field by hand every single year.

That's after this.

Music every single year. That's after this. Nicholas Lindholm never set out to be a blueberry grower.

He moved to Maine to study anthropology and religion at Bates College and only got involved in food production after working on a couple of organic farms in the region.

After a little five or six years on three or four different farms, I knew that this is what I

wanted to do.

...