- May 15, 2014
I took down an Elm out by the driveway about four years back – one that had died.
It was one that I dug up in my parents’ back yard in Fredericton – just a switch at the time. They had seeded naturally and were coming up all over the place and my Dad, always a tree planter, hated to mow them down and encouraged me to take a few. That was years ago. I planted several here.
They grow fast but Dutch Elm disease usually gets them and this one was the first to go.I had been mowing around the stump and over the large roots that buttressed it for several summers and the other day I decided it was time to get them out of there. I thought the wood would have rotted enough to make the task relatively easy but a preliminary attempt to throw a chain around the stump and jerk it out with my half-ton made it immediately clear that I had a job ahead of me.
I started with a shovel and a crowbar and exposed enough of the massive roots to get at them with a chainsaw without driving the bar into the rocky soil. I dulled up an ax flailing away at the smaller roots. A couple more attempts with the chain and the truck got some of the root but were premature when it came to the main stump. After considerably more digging and cutting I ran the chain under one of the large roots and then over the top of a length of heavy timber that would act as a lever. The truck spun a little but the stump finally came out. It was all I could do to lift it onto the tailgate to take it to the side hill and get rid of it.
The whole exercise took me about four hours of bull work and part way through I began thinking of my grandfather.
My Dad was a tree planter; Grandfather was not.
There was an old cot in the corner of my grandmother’s kitchen as there was in most country kitchens of that generation in this part of the world. The hard-working men would rest and digest for a few minutes after a meal before returning to the fields. As an old man, my grandfather used to lie on the cot and look out over his land. I remember him saying as long as he could do that, he didn't care how old and tired he got.
One Sunday afternoon as a crowd was gathering for dinner he asked my uncle Nelson if he would do him a favour.
“Anything at all, Dad” my uncle responded.
Marjorie and Jeremiah. My Mother and Grandfather
“I can see a little spruce from here, at the edge of the field back by the lane. Would you take an ax and go and cut that for me?’ he asked.
Nelson took care of it before we ate. You see, everyone understood that that little spruce was coming back on land that my grandfather had cleared.
I am the fourth generation in my family to have the privilege of stewardship of this ground and I am grateful for it. I now live in my grandfather’s house on land that was granted to his father. He would be happy that I have fixed up the house; he would be disgusted with the state of the land.
With such deep roots here I am continually reminded of my ancestors as I work around the place but rarely as powerfully as during that stump removal.
If you were to sit where that old cot was placed you could look out the same window but you would now be looking into a green wall. Like my father I love to plant trees and I have no need of hay-fields or pasture. However, I have a renewed appreciation of what would lie ahead if I did have that need and I understand a little more clearly why my grandfather wanted to keep the fields clear.
I took out a single stump; he cleared acres.
The day after that job there was a hole to fill. I screened the soil to take out the rocks, mixed in some compost, raked the ground smooth and spread some grass seed. That is a relatively small area of cleared ground in which I am very unlikely to plant anything else anytime soon.