I'm Stumped

Any time you move, there are things to do to the house to make it suit you. Even a new house needs work. And then any house needs constant maintenance.   Our new house had a nicely mowed front yard. But the back half of the yard was allowed to grow quite tall and then bush hogged a couple of times a year.

I like having the whole yard mowed for several reasons. When we first moved here there were deer bedding down in our tall grass.  RJ used to run in the grass to chase them.  Tall grass is a perfect place  for ticks to rest until getting on RJ or ME!

Other animals can hide in the grass.  We have a few groundhogs I'd like to move on down the road.  RJ will chase them off, if he can see them.

We saw three snakes in one day.  Snakes can hide in the grass.

These are all good reasons to keep the place fully mowed. But I admit a lot of it is because it just looks nicer when it is kept mowed.

We hired a guy to bush hog the "back 40".

The major obstacle to mowing the grass closely is the many hidden stumps from bushes that were chopped down at some time in the past.  These can tear up a mower.  And our new mower was expensive. We don't need to kill our new mower.

We have been in the middle of a heat wave.  The last few mornings have been cooler so we have taken advantage of the break in the weather to run out and pull some stumps.  We're good for about an hour. Rather, I'm good for about an hour.

    

Our technique is to dig around the stump with a shovel and pickaxe.  After we expose a large portion of the stump we wrap a chain around it and attach it to our tractor.

    

Some came up easily.

    

Others were a struggle, with a lot of digging and chains slipping off.

    

When we were too tired to continue, but, by no means finished, the section we were working on looked a little like a moonscape.

    

I came in the house to clean up and Lee was left with the clean up. We'll have some soil to distribute when we scrape the garage location to pour the slab.  It will come in handy to fill all the divots we have made in the yard digging up stumps.
    

When all stumps are out and the soil replaced we'll add grass seed and when the grass is established, mowing will be a lot faster.  But it may take a few months.