This is the last of three pages of pictures from our logging project. Click on the navigation links below to go to another page.
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| Those stump caps weigh a ton! I'm peeling one off here. | Giving my back a rest after dragging the stump cap off. | My little pile of stumps. They will eventually be burned ... or not. | I'm contemplating how best to attack the decapitated stumps with the stump grinder. |
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| The stump cutter (a Vermeer SC252) makes quick work of the small stumps. The larger ones take a while to grind through. The alternative is to dig the stumps out, but that makes an ENORMOUS mess and is really tough on my little backhoe. | Mo makes us an outdoor lunch. I'm pointing out to Jacy all the things that are left to be done out in the back. | Part of the cleanup process was rebuilding the stump grinder. I bought it (heavily) used from a rental yard in Seattle. It had a new Honda engine, and the frame and body welds were in good shape, so I invested some time in rebuilding all of the moving parts. Here's a picture of the new cutter wheel, shaft, and bearings, along with a new jackshaft and bearings. | A closeup of the cutter wheel shows new "Greenteeth" - carbide tipped cutting teeth. |
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| Some repairs to the front-end, too - a new hitch, tire, and steering fork. | A new drive shaft, bearings, and drive sprockets round out the rebuild work. It's as good as new (except, of course, for the paint). | There is light at the end of the tunnel. Most of the chip piles have been hauled away (see below). There are just a few small piles of miscellaneous junk that will be burned in a few weeks. | Looks a lot different than it did just a month ago. |
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| I staged all of the non-merchantable small logs into a pile.... | ...and transformed most of that into firewood for a co-worker of Mo's. | I bought a set of forks for the tractor, which were a great help in moving all the firewood logs around. | Here's a pile of four-foot logs that I am holding for Dad's work on his Emerald Heights trail project. He uses the logs as a border for the gravel trail. |
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| Smaller logs cut into three-foot pieces for quick dissection into 18" firewood for Bob and Betsy. | And all of those piles of chips got loaded into the trailer and spread onto our perimeter trail. We were able to pave all of it (just under a mile in length) with the chips from this logging project. | Trail paving..... | ....more trail paving. |
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| A squirrel pokes his head out from a tree to ask if we were through destroying HIS backyard. | Jacy leads the way down the repaved trail.... | ...and one more shot of trail paving. | The collection of debris that couldn't reasonably be chipped was burned. I'm using a fan to keep lots of oxygen going into the fire. |
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| Mo helps feed the fire. | These are the wedges cut out from the big spruce and fir. They're headed for the burn pile. | I thought they looked like watermelon slices, so I decided to try a bite. | Burning makes for hot, gritty work. I destroyed one set of (plastic) lenses on my glasses with all of the grit in the air from the fires. |
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| Jacy and I take a break from feeding the fire to have lunch. | Jacy decides that the perfect spot to lay is the ash ring leftover from one of our fires. | ||
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| After burning and grinding stumps, I pulled out a few of the larger roots that were left. There will be much more root pulling next spring and summer when we complete the landscape cleanup. | By the end of October, it was looking pretty good! Smoothed out, no piles of debris or chips left over. |