Stump the Shark
Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2011 5:19 pm
No, this isn't another one of Rudy's puzzler topics...
Over New Year's, my friend Thomas was visiting, staying in the "Guest Bus" and working on firewood (he has some misguided impression that chopping firewood is "good exercise"). Last Wednesday, he decided to build a fire on the old stump by the front of the Crown and burn it up.
Well, that fire burned for six days, I kept it going by feeding it all the scrap wood around the wood shed, fallen limbs from the trees around the yard, old fence posts, and finally, cutting off bits of the stump and feeding to the fire burning itself up.
This Monday evening, the fire just up and went out after burning up almost everything above ground on the formerly 24" diameter trunk. I probed around in the ashes and determined that the fire had burned all the way down to dirt in the center of the stump. A bit of excavation revealed that what was above ground was half or less of the total bulk of the stump, there was still a lot of root mass that needed to be removed so I could make the ground level and allow me to mow unimpeded this summer.
So, for the last couple of days, I've used idiot sticks (shovels, pick-and-mattock, etc) to dig out roots, cut them off using the chain saw and axe, and doing a lot of poking a probing to figure out where the next cut is. I figure I'm about half done with the job, assuming that I don't get any nasty surprises:
It's hard to tell what's what. The axe is sticking out of what was the center of the stump, at about the original level of the top. Most of the burning took place on the side of the stump facing the camera, although I did also burn on two other sides. The big pie of debris is roots and root wads that I cut out a section at a time, sometimes after mostly excavating them with the idiot sticks. When it's all over, I'll have a big crater to fill in with the piles of dirt. When I started this, I had hoped that the fire would dig into the roots and I'd be left with a smoking crater, but this tree didn't burn like some of the conifers in other parts of the yard, the fire really didn't go into the roots. Some of the other stumps I've burned here smouldered for weeks without any attention whatsoever.
Oh well, it will be good to get rid of this blemish in the yard, I get tired mowing around it, it's in the way of my clothesline, Camellia gets her tie-out rope tangled around it, and I'm sure that all those termites living inside it would love to come over to the house for lunch. I'm just glad I don't have a whole field of these to clear.
Over New Year's, my friend Thomas was visiting, staying in the "Guest Bus" and working on firewood (he has some misguided impression that chopping firewood is "good exercise"). Last Wednesday, he decided to build a fire on the old stump by the front of the Crown and burn it up.
Well, that fire burned for six days, I kept it going by feeding it all the scrap wood around the wood shed, fallen limbs from the trees around the yard, old fence posts, and finally, cutting off bits of the stump and feeding to the fire burning itself up.
This Monday evening, the fire just up and went out after burning up almost everything above ground on the formerly 24" diameter trunk. I probed around in the ashes and determined that the fire had burned all the way down to dirt in the center of the stump. A bit of excavation revealed that what was above ground was half or less of the total bulk of the stump, there was still a lot of root mass that needed to be removed so I could make the ground level and allow me to mow unimpeded this summer.
So, for the last couple of days, I've used idiot sticks (shovels, pick-and-mattock, etc) to dig out roots, cut them off using the chain saw and axe, and doing a lot of poking a probing to figure out where the next cut is. I figure I'm about half done with the job, assuming that I don't get any nasty surprises:
It's hard to tell what's what. The axe is sticking out of what was the center of the stump, at about the original level of the top. Most of the burning took place on the side of the stump facing the camera, although I did also burn on two other sides. The big pie of debris is roots and root wads that I cut out a section at a time, sometimes after mostly excavating them with the idiot sticks. When it's all over, I'll have a big crater to fill in with the piles of dirt. When I started this, I had hoped that the fire would dig into the roots and I'd be left with a smoking crater, but this tree didn't burn like some of the conifers in other parts of the yard, the fire really didn't go into the roots. Some of the other stumps I've burned here smouldered for weeks without any attention whatsoever.
Oh well, it will be good to get rid of this blemish in the yard, I get tired mowing around it, it's in the way of my clothesline, Camellia gets her tie-out rope tangled around it, and I'm sure that all those termites living inside it would love to come over to the house for lunch. I'm just glad I don't have a whole field of these to clear.