Bye Bye Stumps

Some years ago I cleared a number of trees around my home. The main driver for this was improving the "defensible space" in the event of a wild land fire. Two of these trees happened to be up near the house in the end of the drive. Last summer I began working on improving the parking area near the house with the installation of a retaining wall and a lot of fill. Before the snow flies...which is not that far ahead. I wanted to extend the wall a bit and add another step to the walk that leads to my shop.
last weekend I started with a stump "burn out" This method is a great historical way to rid one fields for planting, but I can tell you it is a long and slow process. Our little town hosts a late summer music festival and I started our burnout Saturday afternoon. It was a bit like camping but with music wafting up from town about a mile away. Six hours of continual stoking on Sat, and another 8 hours or so on Sunday reduced the stump by only 4 inches or so. I was glad to get some of the scraps burnt from the shop as well as a bit of the slash from the yard.
My little experiment showed me that stump burning is very slow and I realize that primitive people must have taken months to fabricate a "dug out canoe". With the first of two stumps "knocked down" I checked in with a local excavator who was working on a neighbors property tweaking his drive. The Mini Ex was nearby and would be easy to relocate to my place for this quick little job. The guy quoted me just $20 to pull the other stump. Well, It turns out both stumps were intertwined and it took him a bit longer...Still the $50 I finally did pay was well worth it.
To my surprise these thing were MUCH, bigger than I could have imagined. ( think iceberg with 90% hidden below the tranquil surface) I ended up having to drag the 100's of pounds worth of twisted and heavy wood with my truck to move them about after they were pulled. I have a new respect for heavy excavating equipment.
Hanging out in the drive with the "campfire" has inspired us to look into a portable outdoor fire ring. I will be simple enough to back the cars up and enjoy the newly improved space.