Stump Grinding in Cimmaron Trace, Goodlettsville

Cimmaron Trace is two neighborhoods sharing a name

Cimmaron Trace started in 1998 and finished around 2008, and somewhere in the middle the lot sizes changed their mind. Half of Chisolm Trail is tenth-acre pads with houses close enough that you can hear the neighbor's storm door. Overlook Trail and the back sections run out to full acres with a treeline at the rear.

That means two entirely different stump conversations under one subdivision name. On the small pads the whole job is access: a fourteen inch Bradford pear or red maple sitting in a side yard you can touch both fences from, where the answer is a compact machine and a careful route.

On the acre lots the problem is quantity. The original farm treeline is still standing at the back, and once somebody starts thinning it there are half a dozen black walnut, cedar and volunteer hardwood stumps to deal with rather than one.

The small pads: getting in without touching anything

On the tight end of Chisolm Trail there is often no gate at all, just a run of fence with a single swing panel, and the space between the house corner and the fence line comes in under four feet with a downspout and a hose reel in it.

What we do there is measure honestly, bring the machine that fits, and accept the slower feed. The bigger judgment call is the route, because pushing a grinder along a two-foot ribbon of grass between a wall and a fence puts the operator's hands where they should not be if the wheel catches. Where the gap is genuinely too tight we will say so and talk about pulling a fence panel, which takes fifteen minutes and puts back exactly as it was.

A red maple or a pear on one of these pads is a short job once the machine is in place. Getting it in place is most of the morning.

The acre lots: grinding the whole treeline at once

Out on the larger lots the machine goes wherever it likes, and the conversation turns to how much you want gone. Black walnut left from the farm is dense and heavy and grinds slowly, but the root plates are compact. Eastern red cedar is the opposite: soft, stringy wood, but the roots run wide and shallow across the rocky ground on those back lot lines, and they are frequently tangled with old woven wire and t-posts.

We check for metal before we cut, every time. A strand of barbed wire in a cedar butt will take out three teeth in a second and throw a piece of it a surprising distance.

When there are five or six stumps back there, the price per stump falls a long way from what a single one would cost. The trailer is parked, the machine is fueled, and the marginal cost of the next stump is basically time on the wheel.

Where the chips go on a rural-edge lot

On the small pads there is nowhere to put chips and they leave with us. On the acre lots most people want them staying, and that is the right instinct if you use them properly.

We will heap a treeline grind into a windrow behind the stumps rather than spreading it thin over pasture grass, because a thin layer of ground wood over turf just makes a dead patch. Behind the line it breaks down into something useful in a year and nobody looks at it in the meantime.

Walnut spoil we treat separately if you have a garden anywhere near, since walnut chips are not something you want under tomatoes. Say the word and it goes on the trailer instead. This is the Millersville side of Goodlettsville and burning is not the answer people sometimes assume it is, so hauling stays the clean option.