This is the chainsaw that Brian’s mom and sister bought for him and presented on Thanksgiving Day.

What had happened, a week earlier, Brian’s sister came for a visit and while helping us dig out stumps, she noticed the difficulty Brian was having using his 18’’ Poulan.  The new chain saw is a spectacular gift and Brian is very thankful!

We have much chain saw work to do on our little five acre spread. Most of it has to do with big stumps left after the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Not only was there tremendous damage along the South Carolina coast and the city of Charleston, but damage was incredibly extensive inland, too.  Folks out our way were without power for weeks and in our yard alone, probably 20 huge trees came down, leaving broken stumps throughout the yard.  Over the course of time, different owners of the property either planted bushes to camouflage the damage or just let nature take over the areas around the stumps.

We’ve cleared out several of those areas already.  It’s hard work cutting away all the tangled brush and digging around old root systems. One time, a couple of years ago, we used my 4×4 Ford Explorer to wench out a big old azalea root ball and about pulled off my rear bumper!

So, back to the stump we were trying to dig out when Brian’s sister was here.

It’s the stump of an old pine tree and the wood is harder than concrete. Once we got all the brush around it cleared away we could see that some previous homeowner had tried to burn it out with no luck. We dug down around the stump about three feet, with the intent of putting our little chain saw to it to cut it below ground level so we could cover it with dirt and then grow some grass. (We would never be able to pull this stump out, it probably goes down at least six more feet into the ground!) Of course, Brian’s little chain saw couldn’t handle it and after much struggle, we gave up. I guess we could hire a back hoe or stump grinder to defeat it. But, we’d also need to hire one for the 15 or so other huge stumps that need to come out, too.

The picture below is one of many wild growth areas that need cleaned out. Each one, I’m sure has a huge stump in the middle.

So, we’re excited happy resolved to do this project ourselves with the new chainsaw. Winter is the right season around these parts to tackle such an undertaking.  There’s nothing (other than any little excuse we can find) to stop us now from finally getting more of it done. I’m calling the project, The South Carolina Chain Saw Massacre.

On a side note, this is the turkey we smoked for our Thanksgiving dinner. My good friend, Pam Groth, shared with me her dad’s secret brine recipe several years ago and it is killer good! We also used apple wood chips in our cylindrical smoker and cooked the bird upright on a utensil we call “stick up its ass,” (for obvious reasons) for about five hours.

And, I also made some kick ass collards and BACON with greens just picked from our garden.