Stumped on Stumps

badlander · #1 11/03/12, 07:06 PM

Need some advice from folks who have been there and done that.

We are clearing our pastures this fall. A Christmas tree farm next door to us seeded pines in both pastures. Not bad. Pines are pretty until they get hit by some sort of blight, probably wilt, and die leaving us with 8 acres off dead trees dropping limbs all over and looking really ratty. Many have broke off on their own and others are so bad DH can push them over roots and all with his tractor.

What's giving us the devil are the stumps from the trees that have broken off and fallen on their own. They have tap roots that are about 18 inches across. We have been digging down and breaking off the peripheral roots with our subsoil buster (most of them are rotten and break away easily) but the tap roots are tough as nails and resist any amount of pulling with a log chain.

How do you pull stumps and what advice can you give us?

Ken in Maine · #2 11/03/12, 08:25 PM

If you're doing 8 acres I'd suggest renting a mini-excavator for a day or weekend and go crazy popping them out. Then use your tractor to haul them off.

Mini's rent for $259.00 ish for a day and about $375.00 for the weekend.

Make sure you plan plenty of projects because the stumping will go really fast.

**fordson major** · #3 11/04/12, 08:12 AM

what are you going too use the land for and what type of soil is it? we used a back hoe to clear out the stumps from 40+year old Christmas trees, rocky soil and needed to be stump free for equipment. have been cutting out trees in pasture and just cut the tree stump close to the ground and let nature take its course for a few years. neigbour cut out a maple bush the same way, waited 10 years then ploughed it all up and reseeded pasture.

fantasymaker · #4 11/04/12, 08:28 AM

Id use a trackhoe with a root rake.

badlander · #5 11/04/12, 08:45 AM

The land is fine topsoil/timothy/brome grass with clay at about 12 inches. We are looking at removing about 50 trees the biggest no more than 12-14 inches in trunk diameter. We have been giving the hay away up until now to get the pastures mowed (we could do it ourselves) but would like to change that in the future so we could market the hay ourselves. No immediate plans to plant a crop but we would maybe like to utilize part of it for food plots and garden.

Would a three point hitch type back hoe work?

rambler · #6 11/04/12, 10:14 AM

3pt hitch backhoes work, not as well as a real one, depends on your tractor. Tractor hydraulics are often slow, but it gets the job done eventually, and then you can resel the backhoe for about what you bought it (I'm assuming used) or if you like it can keep it.

Renting a trackhoe will get it done quicker.

Letting the stumps rot another year or 2 will get the job done for free.

Depends on your time frame, rent big equipment & be done, buy smaller equipment & get it done eventually, or let nature take it's course trading time for money.

--->PAul

cnsper · #7 11/04/12, 10:39 AM

If you are only using for pasture, just rent a stump grinder and grind them down below ground level. They will not grow back.

oneokie · #8 11/04/12, 11:07 AM

Apply a healthy dose of nitrogen to the field. That will feed the soil microbes that feed on the stumps and roots.

Spotted Owl · #9 11/04/12, 02:13 PM

What about renting a cat with 2-3 foot rippers in the back? Rip out and pile the stumps, while ripping the ground and mixing things up. A 3 or 4 should work like a million bucks and be right about the same cost as a hoe. Then run the rippers about 6" deep to rake all the small stringers. Then just run your disk around when you're done and plant away.

We do this on small clearing jobs around here.

Owl

**highlands** · #10 11/04/12, 03:59 PM

I would leave the stumps. Put some dirt or better yet manure on top of them. They will rot out and fertilize the soil. Mushroom culture is another possibility on some tree types (e.g., hardwoods). This saves a lot of effort and improves the soil more than digging out the stumps. Animals graze around them just fine. Makes great pasture. We've done it this easy way repeatedly as we clear new fields.

Field Clearing – Grapple Skidder | Sugar Mountain Farm

badlander · #11 11/04/12, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by highlands

I would leave the stumps. Put some dirt or better yet manure on top of them. They will rot out and fertilize the soil. Mushroom culture is another possibility on some tree types (e.g., hardwoods). This saves a lot of effort and improves the soil more than digging out the stumps. Animals graze around them just fine. Makes great pasture. We've done it this easy way repeatedly as we clear new fields.

Field Clearing – Grapple Skidder | Sugar Mountain Farm

I think you are on the right track, highlands. We are trying to do this low tech. So while we would love to rent or buy a backhoe/trackhoe, we are trying to do this with the equipment on hand, namely our Mahindra 3510 with bucket, a sub soil buster, shovels, and two axes. OH, and a chain saw.

Today we pulled (literally) about a half dozen trees before it started to rain just enough to make the tractor slide around in spite of it's four wheeled drive. When I say pull, I mean literally. One of them was still half alive, approximately 6 in diameter trunk and DH was able to push it over roots and all with the bucket.

What we are hoping for help on is how to pull or destroy these trunks low tech. Some of the trees have either broken off two feet above ground on their own due to high winds or unfortunately snapped off when we tried to pull or push them over leaving stump and roots intact. We have been able to bury some that were partially broken off but many have astoundingly huge tap roots. Luckily most of the remaining trees are 10 inches or less in diameter. Unfortunately the blasted tap roots are like upside down trees.

We would like to pull as many of the stumps as possible. What remains, shattered or impossible to pull with what we have on hand will probably be buried to continue to rot. We are hoping to plant a small orchard this spring and hope to have the field cleared so we can turn the grass crop into a marketable commodity. Many of the Amish around us would probably be interested in harvesting it and paying a set price per bale of hay. They mow it with horse drawn mowers and hay rake and then rent a tractor and baler to finish the job.

The trunks all need to be pulled or below ground. The dead/rotting trunks are not the problem. The trunks we will be dealing with from the scrub oak and honey locust that we are going to have to take down that are still alive are the problem children.

oneokie · #12 11/04/12, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by badlander

honey locust

Are prolific root sprouters. Take one down and the next year you will have many, many more sprouts to deal with.

Don't have any idea of how you feel about chemical herbicides, but this is one instance where it would be worthwhile.

**fordson major** · #13 11/05/12, 05:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oneokie

Are prolific root sprouters. Take one down and the next year you will have many, many more sprouts to deal with.

Don't have any idea of how you feel about chemical herbicides, but this is one instance where it would be worthwhile.

neighbour planted these and they went all over!! repeated mowing when young took care of them when small.

badlander · #14 11/05/12, 07:08 AM

We've been doing just that with the small ones we have discovered. The bush hog makes short work of them. If we can't bush hog them, a log chain does the job, jerking roots and all. We have some pretty good sized mature trees with thorns as long as your fingers, however that we have marked for firewood.

Thanks for the tips on the honey locust. Just makes us more sure that the trunks and roots have to go.

Plowpoint · #15 11/05/12, 03:40 PM

I clear a lot of land and the only machine I have found that works well is a bulldozer.

An excavtor is faster at getting it out of the ground, but then how do you get it to the edge of the field? A bulldozer can do both; rip the stump out and push it to the edge of the field, and if you are renting one...and must pay for transport to and from the farm...renting ONE piece of equipment makes sense.

You also need to go big. You can rent small equipment but it just does not work. You end up spending a lot more hours doing what a bigger machine can do in less time, and less money even if it is more money per hour.

I prefer a 850 John Deere dozer just because I have operated one a lot and cleared a lot of land with one. I can rent it for $850 per day and burn about 4 gallons per hour. I have tried other methods, but the bulldozer has always been the fastest, cheapest and even the best result for my efforts. I say that because with its long length, and wide stance...and wide blade, when you are done you end up with a nice flat field. Smaller machines and other methods leave you with more dips and swales because they don't "plane" like a bigger dozer. This is huge because if you are going to spent time and money on making a field, you want to have options: the option to get hay off it, the option to put corn on it, and if you can do those things, you can also graze it. But if you go in with the mind set that it is only going to be grazing, you are limiting yourself because you will leave the field in poor shape...too poor to get equipment on it, and you do not want to limit yourself so early in the game on a farm. Now is the time to make it big, flat and smooth...

I had people say that you push soil over with a dozer, but that is just not true. When you pop a stump out of the ground, you keep your blade up by a foot or so and let the soil fall off the stump...by the time you get to the end of the field, most of the dirt is off the stump and right where you want it...in your field. You push the soil around to get a nice flat field granted, but the soil stays where grass can grow and that is what you want. It takes 500 years to make an inch of top soil, you want to conserve it!

An excavator comes in around $300 per acre while a dozer can do it for about $200. Those are real world numbers in Maine which has a high number of stumps to the acre, and is rocky soil. This past summer I cleared a 10 acre field for $200.64 per acre and even posted the math on here. I tried about every method there is at removing stumps, but I am convinced a bulldozer is the answer. Even those that suggest pigs would come in well over $200 per acre using that method considering their initial cost and upkeep. A small tractor, probably well over that as well.

When it comes to stumps, you need horsepower and tracks; fortunately you can rent them.

badlander · #16 11/05/12, 04:25 PM

Plowpoint, cannot argue with you about the superior firepower of a dozer and we have kicked around that idea.

Around our place we have a guy that charges under 100 dollars an hour to doze just about anything for you that needs dozing. He changed the grade of our drive way a couple of years back and it cost next to nothing to have the driveway and front yard reshaped.

The challenge for us is half the fun and that challenge is getting the job done with what we have on hand.

It's really a humbling experience to do this and think back 200 years to the pioneer who had only axes, shovels and oxen to move a stump out of their field. No, we don't want to resort to that but we would rather keep the money in our pockets and use the equipment that we have on hand to get this job done. There isn't a real deadline. Right now I think we have about 40% of the dead fall cleared and the stumps pulled. What are left over will be burned or buried to rot but that is our last resort.

We want these babies to go away!

frankva · #17 11/05/12, 05:41 PM

I saw a very old picture of my grandfather clearing stumps with a team.

I didn't get it, way back then when he was alive.

Don't forget the time honored redneck stump abuse method. Target practice.

Plowpoint · #18 11/06/12, 05:06 AM

I hear ya Badlander and respect you for it...

I try to do the same thing myself. I tried to get a lot of different contractors out here to push stumps but no one had the time so I just rented it and did it myself. It was fun.

I am a 10th generational farmer here and have a book written by my Great Uncle who cleared the same spot of land back in 1838. He said in his book that him and my Great Grandfather....many times removed, "cut trees and burned the brush on 10 acres one summer". That isn't bad as it took me a year to harvest the wood and a week to bulldoze the stumps after it grew back into trees from 1945 when we quit using the field (it is wet). Of course back then the trees were bigger and less in number, so while they had to use an axe, one tree would make a half acre hole in the forest where as today we have 30-40 trees to the acre.

You could see on the rock walls where this field had been tilled (small rocks) and yet they had a few big ones too, granite hand split with wedge and feather and hauled out with oxen. You can tell because the biggest rocks on a rock wall are always downhill...because oxen could not haul rocks AND defy gravity!

Still they left a few of the bigger rocks and one rock was the size of the blade. 10 feet long, 5 feet high and about 6 feet through. It took me 20 minutes, but I got it out of the ground and shoved up to the stump pile. I told everyone, it took us 162 years to get that rock out of the field, but us Plowpoints do not give up easily!

Here is that rock in its final resting spot:

[IMG]

Stumped on Stumps - Homesteading Questions

100_1942 by Plowpoints, on Flickr[/IMG]

**fordson major** · #19 11/06/12, 05:31 AM

thats what you think! advertise that rock on craigslist and get some cash from a city dweller! friend of mine keeps his log truck busy in the summer months hauling and selling boulders like that one for big dollars. will have to get a pick of a buddys stump grinder, tree grinder is more like it, can take a full grown maple down and chews it to nothing (waste of firewood though) also eats up smaller rock.

**fordson major** · #20 11/06/12, 05:34 AM

the pioneers also had another tool in our belt, fire, when used properly, can reduce stumps and some rocks to size. dynamite is just plain fun if you can get it and use properly.