Stumps 8 and 9 for the year

I want to be done removing tree stumps this year.  However after I removed stump 7 I then came across stumps 8 and 9 poking out of the ground.      I don't know why this year I am finding a number of stumps poking now out of the ground.  I found more stumps this Spring than I did the previous 10 to 20 years in total.

Okay...  let me check these new stumps out.

Stump 8 was soft and decaying on top.  So I used the shovel and axe and removed the top so many inches.  I called it good as I don't think it will bother my harrow now.  Maybe the rest of the stump will decay before coming up out of the ground.

Stump 9 was more work.  Fortunately it wasn't near as much work as my recent stump removals.

In the center of the photo you can see signs of the stump.  I had hoped it might only just be the remnants of an old tree root.  Nope.  To see what I had hoped this was, see the last photos to see what I found after removing the stump and filling the hole back in.

Some days I dug until dark, that is why the hole looks different.

I thought the side root going from the last part of the stump was low enough in the ground that I would leave it.  Nope.  Instead of going down as it left the stump, I later found that the side root went up.

After I filled the dirt back into the hole and was about to take this photo, I saw the side root at the top of the ground.  I removed it.  The side root was what I had hoped the stump would only be back when I first saw the stump.

Tulips and rain

A cold (low 40s for a high temperature) and rainy day today.  We need the rain.  So I slept most of the day.

Here are a couple of photos of my tulips from earlier this week when they started blooming.  I don't have as many tulips anymore. The tulips grew in the area between the bricks and the house.   These tulips are some extra that grew outside that area.  I think it was because my former cat Daisy like to use the flower area as a litter box.  Oh well, I still loved my cat.

Corral fence pipe and river otters

Yesterday when I worked on my tractor I also spent time to fix the pipe I have running on one of the corral fences.  I have fixed this in April 2020 after Toby bent the pipe.  (https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2020/04/toby-pushing.html)

Photos after I fixed it yesterday. I had to re-nail new boards over the pipe as the previous boards were broken off this post.  I had to straighten the pipe (somewhat) and put the two pieces of pipe back together the best I could.

Tonight after I put a new large hay bale out for the cows I noticed the pipe was back into two pieces and bent again somewhat.  The boards holding the pipe was still good.  I can't screw the two pieces of pipe back together so I'll see if they stay together under the board or if they separate again if Toby pushes on and bends the pipe again.

Earlier this evening, when taking a break after chopping and removing another tree stump, I saw three animals in the south pasture.  They were heading into the pasture from the river.  I think they are river otters.  My neighbor across the road and along the creek said he saw three river otters sometime earlier this year.  I've only seen one otter in the river and that was a few years ago.  I don't think any otters live near here.  A few days ago I saw either a small beaver or more likely a large muskrat swimming upstream in the river.

The otters were in the south pasture but after going around a bit came over into the middle pasture before heading to the hayfield.  I think the otters were going back to the creek.  It is amazing they knew where the creek was as it is low and can't be seen until one is almost there; and the distance from my river to the creek must be over a half mile at least.

My camera's battery gave out.  I could only take a photo when they were in the south pasture and couldn't take another photo when they got somewhat closer.  Darn.   The otters were quite amazing to watch as they walked - their way of walking - across my pastures.  And they can move fast when walking on land.

The otters as seen from where I was sitting.

On the computer I cropped the photo so you can kind of see two of the otters in the center of the photo.  The third otter was behind the tree when I took the photo.

Tractor leak

Today I finally fixed a leak on my tractor.  The transmission/hydraulic fluid had a slow leak when I ran my tractor.  The mechanic who is fixing my fuel gage problem was going to fix the leak, but then said when the fuel gage problem wasn't where he thought it initially was, he wasn't sure I then wanted him to open that area to fix the leak.  Yes, but okay...  I guess I'll then fix it.

The leak wasn't quite where the mechanic initially thought it was.  The area I found the leak on the engine was greasy, grimy, and dirty.  My neighbor Curtis has a pressure washer and I used that to clean my engine.  As best I could. The grease only was cleaned under direct water impact and not quite everywhere was accessible, even though I lifted the tractor's hood.

Once the area was mostly cleaned - and dry - then the next day I could see exactly where the leak was.  The leaks were where the green nozzles go into the small black metal.

I then learned I had to take the tractor's hood off to really get to the problem area.  That was an effort as I had to watch a YouTube video to see exactly how to get the hood off.

I then had to bungie cord up the hood's lever where the hood had been attached to as the lever was partially in the way of where I needed to work.

And I had to also remove a small part of the hood that is fastened next to the cab.  

Since the leak was where the green nozzles fit into the small black metal unit, my neighbor Curtis told me he thought the nozzles' O-rings were bad.  I took the nozzles out.

To me the O-Rings still looked good.  But what do I know?  On the way to the hardware store I drove by my neighbor Wyatt's place and he was out working in his garage. Wyatt knows a lot about engine repairs.  I asked him about the O-rings and he thought they looked a little flat.   He also told me where to get new O-rings.  Not at a hardware store, but at a store that sold parts for engines and hydraulics.  Their O-rings would stand up better and last longer for hydraulic engines.  So I did.   The salesman sold me two O-rings for 35 cents a piece and put them on my nozzles.  What a deal!

In the photo below the new O-rings are on the nozzles and the old O-rings are below the nozzles.

After I re-installed the nozzles the leaks stopped.  Hurray.

Then when watching the engine run to make sure the leak had stopped I then noticed a very small leak/wet area on the other side of the engine.  I had to use a flashlight to better see the area as that area was right against the cab.  It is in an area that I don't know how one gets to.  When I take my tractor back next week to get the fuel gage fixed after the part arrives, I will have the mechanic look at this next area.

It never ends.

Stump 7 for the year

I finally finished removing stump number 7 for the year.  Once again another massive tree stump.  I wouldn't say this was the largest tree stump I removed, but this stump and stump 5 must be in the top five largest tree stumps I have removed over the years.

Another stump I chopped as I had to chop and remove side roots of the stump so I could dig around the rest of the stump sections and roots.  This stump had different roots join together.  Not a common thing I have found over the years.  Don't think this was a Western Larch / Tamarack tree.  Some roots were hard, others were not as hard.  I did have one root with sap in it.  This time when I chopped a root, sap ran out of the root like water.

The start.  How big can this stump be?

Still doesn't seem too bad of a stump.

Hmm... the stump has gotten larger.  And a side root grew just below ground level instead of angling downward like they usually do.  This far out I quit digging around the root and chopped it off.

Oh wait.  Another side root growing just below ground level.  And farther out.  The previous side root was at the edge of the hole.

The second side root I removed.  Again I got tired of digging to find the end.  And again the root didn't go downward as it left the stump.  And a pretty big root just below ground level.

I am getting tired of digging around and chopping tree stumps. I spent two to three hours a day for quite a number of days.  The closest part of the stump couldn't be easily chopped and I didn't want to dig around it anymore.

I should be able to easily pull this part of the stump from the ground using the tractor.  Nope.  I tried pulling it up and the back of the tractor started to come up off the ground.  So I went around to the other side of the hole.  Maybe it would be easier to pull the stump root out of the ground.  Not really.  But since the rear of the tractor wasn't coming off the ground I was able to try driving away over and over and finally the root came out of the ground.   A short part of the chain has smaller links and they didn't break, but they kind of elongated.  This made these links stick together.   So I used another chain I had for the rest of the stump.  The next day I used a hammer to break loose the links that were sticking together.  The last link was so elongated as to make the link too flat.  I had to hacksaw and cut this link off the chain.

This part of the stump had been connected to the rest of the stump.  Before I got the tractor I chopped and removed another side root or two and also the top of the stump. That is why I initially thought I could also remove this end section by hand.  You can also see how hard the wood was at the top of the stump.

Go back to the earlier photo of the overall stump.  I pushed that stump with the tractor's bucket.  Nope.  Didn't break off.  The stump leaned but still was too difficult to pull out of the ground.  I used an axe, and since the stump wasn't too thick along the top, I split the stump into three pieces.  While the stump top wasn't too thick, the wood was still hard and took some effort to split.  I also saw a couple of side roots going into the dirt and had to chop and cut those to make less of the stump to pull out of the dirt.

The following two photos are of the larger two parts of the stump I was able to pull out.

All removed now.  I didn't measure the hole.  The previous large stump was 12-13 ft long and 9 feet wide.  This stump was at least 13 ft long.  The width was less.  Maybe 5 to 6 ft wide.   It was a long tree stump but not a wide or round stump.

I used the tractor to push the dirt back into the hole as I didn't want to spend an afternoon to push the dirt in using a shovel.  So some of the grassy sections went underground and not completely on top.

In the background are the stumps - there are two right next to one another - that I plan to burn in a bonfire later.  I'm tired of removing stumps for now, so the stump on the left side in the grass I will leave till next year.  Earlier I had planned on removing that stump this year.

In the background center you can see the dirt where stump 5 used to be.

Stack of tree logs

Another photo of one of my stacks of tree logs.  When I dumped Jan's tree stump out in the pasture the other day, I then brought back another tractor bucket of the large logs now that it looks like the ants have left those logs.  Those logs are not in this photo.  The wooden pallet in the foreground is now covered.

Wood pieces photos

A couple of photos of recent pieces of wood.  The first photo is of a piece from the stump 5 I just removed.  Unfortunately the photo doesn't capture the look.  The piece is more curved, kind of like bowl like. 

This piece I found laying out in the pasture.

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.