Grinding out stumps

  Over the past few weeks we have been thinning trees to give the remaining trees in our pecan orchards more room to grow. Even though we can cut the tree stump down fairly close to the soil surface with a chainsaw, that chunk of solid wood that still sticks up can still play havoc with our mowers.
   Yesterday, we brought out our stump grinder to cut all our tree stump down to a level about 3 inches below the soil surface (photo above). Ours is a 3-point hitch model stump grinder that uses a spinning saw blade to grind the wood into chips. Hydraulic cylinders move the blade's arm up and down, back and forth, and right to left.
   It takes about 5 minutes to grind down a 10-12 inch diameter pecan tree stump.  Later this year, we will need to move soil into the hole that becomes noticeable after the remaining portion of the tree's root system starts to rot.