This stump didn't have a main tap root so I ended up digging around side roots to be able to dig down to expose much of the three main tree roots. I wanted to get rid of most of the stump through burning so I ended up digging down about five ft.
I cut away many of the side roots to enable me to dig further down the main roots. The photo below shows the side roots I chopped off. One time, as I chopped the bottom of a side root, the force cracked the top part of the root. Once I finished cutting through the bottom of the root I felt very wet on my jean pants leg. My pants leg was soaked from thigh to the bottom of the pants from liquid sap that came out of the cracked tree root. This from a tree stump that has been dead for over 15 years, and of which I had burned to the ground level eight years ago.
Here is the stump before I burned it. To burn it I filled the hole with odds and ends of scrap wood. Due to the large size of the hole the stump looks smaller in the photo that it actually was. The pile of side roots in the previous photo is smaller than the size of the tree stump in the hole.
Here is the tree stump hole after I burned the stump. The second photo, taken when I partially filled the hole with dirt, shows how a nearby tree's live root that ran along the hole was burnt from the heat of the bonfire.
Here is after I filled the hole back in with dirt. In the background is another tree root I had partially dug around. More about that later.
This a partially dug tree stump right next to the one I burned.
I partially dug around this stump to see if the two stumps were connected under ground. They were not. This stump provided amusement several times to my uncles and aunts. Two times when I moved around the hole of the burning tree stump to add more wood, or adjust the wood burning in the hole, I forgot about this stump and hole and in the darkness I fell into this partially dug hole. I didn't get hurt but I did tear a new hole in my pants when I landed on the stump. As you can see, the one end of the hole is relatively deep.
"He's down! He's up! ... He's down again! He's up again!" were what my relatives called out to great amusement once they got over their initial shock at seeing me suddenly disappear into the ground.
I also temporarily lost my shovel in the fire. When I tried to hook and pull over one of the partially burnt stumps, the stump held and the tip of my shovel handle came off in my hand and the shovel fell on top of the burning stump. I was able to reach into the fire and grab my shovel handle and retrieve the shovel before the handle caught fire.
I also caused my aunts anxiety when I moved closely around the hole to check on the fire, test the stump strength or add new boards, especially the side with the side roots dug out. You can kind of see it on the right side of the photo above that shows the hole after the stump has burnt. I sometimes would step on the ground on the middle of the right side. One of my aunts and I shared a bottle of wine and after I walked too close to the fire for their comfort they cut me off the wine.
My uncles were in charge of tossing extra stuff on the bonfire. Larry got so into throwing stuff on the fire I had to slow him down so we'd have stuff to add to the fire later on when it began to die down.
The fire...
This is one of my favorite photos.
My uncles and aunts are "early" people and not a "late" people like Tammy and I. Tammy and I would get started on our bonfire sometime between 10 and 10:30 pm and we would burn until around 2 am. This bonfire with my uncles and aunts started around 8:30 pm and we quit and were back to the house at 11:15 pm.
Still, we got the job done as with only one burning all but a small piece of the stump was burned.
The following is a photo I took of the moon over the corral after we got back to the yard. I didn't use a flash when taking the photo. It appears one of the heifer's eyes showed up - perhaps due to the light from the RV in my back yard. The heifer is standing next to the large wood hay feeder.
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