snow_monkey
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Must be part badger!
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Removing Stumps Naturally?
- Thread starter jr37
- Start date
Must be part badger!
booondocker
New member
A while back before I got smart…okay, when I was in my 20’s I purchased a house that needed a little work…okay, lots of work.
The basement leaked, the roof leaked, the kitchen was shot, and the tile colors were…awful…. nonetheless, it was my first house and I got a “great deal” on that place.
Well, whilst I was pulling fixtures out and parking them on the curb for the whole neighborhood to see that a real go getter had purchased this fixer-upper….I took time out to study the landscaping which was old and way over grown. It’s useful life was pretty much done. So I decided that I could get it all out of there and replace it one by one as time and money permitted. So I got out the chainsaw, which always brought the neighbors to the windows, and started hacking away.
Being a novice at such tasks, I cut things down to within a few inches of the ground, NOT thinking about how I was going to get the stumps out which of course, you need to do to plant anew.
In an hour…the place was void of greenery, and as I sat there pride-full and inspecting the work, I began to realize that the REAL work was not above ground but below it.
Hah….I thought, this is the job for the BEAST.
The Beast was my affectionate term for my second set of wheels, which served as hunting and fishing machine on weekends and kid carrier thru the week. In other words, it was my wife’s ride…which while reluctant of it at first, I had sold her on the virtues of having 4 wheel drive to get around in the winter time…which would mean she would never have to worry about getting stuck as the old rear drive cars often did.
It was a rough riding truck, having had a previous owner who decided that the rear leaf springs needed to be beefed up. If anyone ever rode in one of these units, right off the bat, you know the guy was a nut job, and the spring set on this thing was stiff right from the get go, so you can imagine what kind of luxury riding machine it was after he got done, and I added to the mix by putting some big (hey big is always better right?) knurly tires to be sure it road like a lumber wagon.
Anyway, I figured that the beast would be up to the task of pulling those stumps and do it without me having to turn a spade to break the soil.
So I wrapped a logging chain which no self respecting scout owner would be caught dead without…to help folks out of ditches and well….the 60 seemed like 100 feet of chain added some weight to the unit and that wasn’t all bad with the revised spring set, eh?
This would only need a little tug I said as I backed her up and hooked the hook to the trailer hitch. I gave it a tug…nothing. I tugged it again….and again…nothing. After successive attempts, I was thinking that perhaps I should have left myself a bit more stump sticking up to grab and tip the stump with…but that didn’t happen, and now the prospect of digging was looking rather ominous. So I decided that perhaps if I slacked up that chain a bit and gave it heck…maybe the stump would yield.
Well, the stump did come out…pulled right up on the sidewalk and sat there pretty as a picture.
The next day, I replaced the exhaust pipes, which had broken with the jolt, and it only cost me $295 of my hard earned dollars. In hind sight…. the shovel was probably the better way to go on this one…but I did find out that the scout would take some pretty good jolts that it would never otherwise have had to endure going into the backwoods.
That sort of confidence is important…if your gunna have a decent swamp buggy….and for all I know that machine, long since sold, is still pulling stumps the “easy” way.
The basement leaked, the roof leaked, the kitchen was shot, and the tile colors were…awful…. nonetheless, it was my first house and I got a “great deal” on that place.
Well, whilst I was pulling fixtures out and parking them on the curb for the whole neighborhood to see that a real go getter had purchased this fixer-upper….I took time out to study the landscaping which was old and way over grown. It’s useful life was pretty much done. So I decided that I could get it all out of there and replace it one by one as time and money permitted. So I got out the chainsaw, which always brought the neighbors to the windows, and started hacking away.
Being a novice at such tasks, I cut things down to within a few inches of the ground, NOT thinking about how I was going to get the stumps out which of course, you need to do to plant anew.
In an hour…the place was void of greenery, and as I sat there pride-full and inspecting the work, I began to realize that the REAL work was not above ground but below it.
Hah….I thought, this is the job for the BEAST.
The Beast was my affectionate term for my second set of wheels, which served as hunting and fishing machine on weekends and kid carrier thru the week. In other words, it was my wife’s ride…which while reluctant of it at first, I had sold her on the virtues of having 4 wheel drive to get around in the winter time…which would mean she would never have to worry about getting stuck as the old rear drive cars often did.
It was a rough riding truck, having had a previous owner who decided that the rear leaf springs needed to be beefed up. If anyone ever rode in one of these units, right off the bat, you know the guy was a nut job, and the spring set on this thing was stiff right from the get go, so you can imagine what kind of luxury riding machine it was after he got done, and I added to the mix by putting some big (hey big is always better right?) knurly tires to be sure it road like a lumber wagon.
Anyway, I figured that the beast would be up to the task of pulling those stumps and do it without me having to turn a spade to break the soil.
So I wrapped a logging chain which no self respecting scout owner would be caught dead without…to help folks out of ditches and well….the 60 seemed like 100 feet of chain added some weight to the unit and that wasn’t all bad with the revised spring set, eh?
This would only need a little tug I said as I backed her up and hooked the hook to the trailer hitch. I gave it a tug…nothing. I tugged it again….and again…nothing. After successive attempts, I was thinking that perhaps I should have left myself a bit more stump sticking up to grab and tip the stump with…but that didn’t happen, and now the prospect of digging was looking rather ominous. So I decided that perhaps if I slacked up that chain a bit and gave it heck…maybe the stump would yield.
Well, the stump did come out…pulled right up on the sidewalk and sat there pretty as a picture.
The next day, I replaced the exhaust pipes, which had broken with the jolt, and it only cost me $295 of my hard earned dollars. In hind sight…. the shovel was probably the better way to go on this one…but I did find out that the scout would take some pretty good jolts that it would never otherwise have had to endure going into the backwoods.
That sort of confidence is important…if your gunna have a decent swamp buggy….and for all I know that machine, long since sold, is still pulling stumps the “easy” way.