Stump Grinding in the USA

today we're tackling a long overdue project at nate's house we're going to remove some stumps a good friend of mine chris newman recently started a stump grinding business so we're going to do today the same thing you get to do today which is sit back and enjoy the show now stumps in fields and yards have always been a problem for people and there have always been a few different ways that a stump can be removed and not one of them are easy you can dig it out occasionally you can pull it out or burn it out you know there are things you can do to encourage them to rot but that takes years sometimes decades now these three stumps are being removed today just for the aesthetic improvement right just to make it easier to mow the lawn and reduce some maintenance and make it a little friendlier yard for the kids but for farmers and ranchers farmers particularly stumps take up valuable pasture and growing space you know one time just to illustrate the fact that this has always been a problem and in the past a bigger problem than it is today abraham lincoln was asked what he intended to do about a particularly difficult painful and divisive issue in the country and he was quoted as saying well if you have a stump that's too big to dig out too tough to pull out and too green to burn sometimes you just have to plow around it and that's what we've been doing here by the house for too long but even today stumps make obstacles that tractors have to avoid and they add nothing of value each of the methods that i just mentioned has its own pros and cons so for most folks grinding it out or cutting it out as it's sometimes known is usually the best way to get rid of the problem [Music] in 1956 gary vermeer invented the first modern stump cutter that was capable of being operated by one man but i'll tell you what that machine and the earlier iterations that followed it were nothing compared to this little beauty as you can see this tool has an articulating cutting head so the spinning blade can sweep back and forth without moving the whole machine it has tracks to move itself around without damaging the lawn much it has really interesting and probably highly engineered carbide cutting bits that shear off strips of stump with minimal wear it's narrow so it can fit through small gates it's lightweight so it can be towed by almost anybody and it truly does all the hard work so the operator simply moves a joystick and the machine does the rest we made a video a while ago talking about you know heavy equipment generally and i recommend you give it a watch because we cover and look back at all the different machines that i've owned over the years and how they helped my life at the time in every case the equipment paid its own way so to speak right it earned its salt and owning it made my life a lot easier equipment raises the productivity of a project and allows more work to get done in a shorter period of time increased productivity has the net result of reducing costs reduced costs allow more building and construction to take place more trees pruned and planted more crops harvested and processed more systems and infrastructure maintained and overall i gotta say a more comfortable life for all of us a great example of this is the wood chipper that cowboy tree service brought to my house when we were trimming up that willow tree i'll bet that tool which by the way was also manufactured by vermeer saved at least 15 man hours of labor by chipping up those branches without this thing we would have been cutting them into firewood moving it around stacking it hauling the smaller branches and limbs and switches to the dump or maybe burning them raking and sweeping up the chunks i'm telling you it would have been a completely different experience instead we picked up the branches one by one fed them into the chipper that's it game over and then the mulch will be used in my garden in two or three years and cowboy tree service was gone by noon they did another tree job that very same afternoon how do you beat that so credit goes to the engineers and the folks at vermeer who prototype and create these machines when you're watching something like this work it's easy to think of the design as sort of obvious right of course how else would you build a machine like this but i'm sure there were hundreds of stump grinder variations most of them failed that led the way to this little masterpiece it's too easy to take machines and even products like this for granted isn't it we forget that not only were they invented and designed by really smart and creative people and often on speculation at their own expense but that they are built from raw materials and painted and assembled and tested and transported across the country often financed by the manufacturer or the dealer so the contractors can buy them own them be incentivized to take care of them and get more work done this is just one tiny aspect of our comfortable modern lives that we take for granted and that everyone who ever lived before us would be completely astonished by if they could see it and then if they could see that they would be astonished again at how many of the details of this comfortable life we live we complain about and fight over [Music] vermeer is a neat company that always sort of puts a smile on my face when i see their gear it's named after gary vermeer the farmer from iowa who invented the stump grinder along with the round hay baler the horizontal boring machine and who knows how many other labor-saving marvels the fact that his company has grown and expanded over the decades creating jobs increasing productivity reducing the costs of these products for consumers and is doing it from deep in the heartland in pella iowa really warms my heart a lot of their equipment is designed for farming and agriculture so if you live in a big city you might not see it all the time but i'm telling you what these products are making life better for all of us [Music] back in the day i remember that vermeer equipment had a logo on their machines that i really liked i noticed it it stood out it was a young and really strong looking guy with a smile on his face rolling up his sleeves and that picture i guess i could say really embodied the approach that i was trying to take with work at least on the good days a sort of happy confidence you know reinforced by good tools experience and some strength chris newman the guy that's running this machine the guy that owns it the guy that took the chance on buying it and is working with it all over this part of oregon really embodies this notion i worked with him on another job a completely different kind of a job a couple of years ago and this guy can really get the work done he's a total professional he has a great positive energy and is sort of an all-around problem solver type of guy most of all here it is most of all he absolutely will not stop until the job is completely done with no mistakes and perfectly cleaned up if you're in our neck of the woods be sure you call him to remove your stumps thanks for watching essential craftsman and keep up the good work [Music] you

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 103,810

Rating: 4.9359608 out of 5

Keywords: anvil, forge, blacksmith, forging, craftsman, mentor, trades, tradesman, career, smith, carpetner, builder, wisdom, workbench, fabricate, tools, tool, tips, trick, hacks, protip, stumps, stump grinding, stump cutting, stumper grinder, landscaping, landscape design, landscape problems, stump removel

Id: e0bp43WxwqU

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021