Stump 5 for the year

I finished removing stump 5.  This was one of the stumps I planned on removing this year.  This stump took a while to remove as I ended up digging, and chopping, it completely out.  No burning of this stump as: there was no tap root, the multiple roots going down overall were too large, and they were a number of roots going down.  Due to the number of roots going down or out, I had to chop some to remove them in order to be able to dig around the other roots.  I chopped off so many roots that it was better to remove all the roots rather than building a fire to get rid of the last few roots.

This was a massive tree stump.  I never saw the tree before it died, but I believe it was a massive tree.  And I guess it was a Western Larch, or Tamarack, tree.  That was because the roots were still very hard, and a couple of the roots still had sap in them, even after the tree had been dead for over 20 years.

The start

Early on I found side roots that were partially decomposed.  The top was gone but the bottom part hadn't decomposed yet.

The bottom parts of partially decomposed side roots.  Still hard.

Sap still inside one of the tree roots.

Large side root

I couldn't catch the image of the ants in the photo.  Many large red and black ants were all over this part of the stump once I scraped the dirt off it.  Also there was some minor sap in this part of the stump.

All of the stump I removed from the ground.

The hole ended up being 12 to 13 feet long, and about 9 feet wide.

Lots of dirt was dug out.

I tried to put all the grassy areas in one section so I could put it back on top when I filled the hole back in.

Hole filled back in - by hand.