FORTY-SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 139 



vicinity of Manistee, and started in to clear it. Along in the spring 

 of 1910 I went up and saw Paul Rose. After getting acquainted he said: 

 "Are you not a little old to start in to raise a young orchard." I 

 probably don't look even as old as I am, but I am not as old as Paul 

 Rose anyway. 



Well, I wanted to get this land cleared and I went at it and have 

 been successful in clearing up 310 acres of this land and have 200 acres 

 under cultivation and planted to trees. I have tried to adopt the most 

 improved method used in successful clearing of land on a large scale. 

 One of the cardinal points that I have tried to follow out all the way 

 through is to keep busy all the time. You lose time on account of bad 

 weather any way, but by planning our work ahead and carrying it 

 forward with diligence we have been able to accomplish what many 

 seem to think is quite extraordinary. 



Our first operation was brushing. I secured two men to cut the 

 brush and then cut the trees down, saw them up, cut off the small 

 stuff like Zy 2 inches in diameter, then trim up these tree tops and what 

 could be made into wood use it that way and the other burn. Our next 

 thing was to go in on that land with teams and chains and do what 

 we called snagging, that is, hitch these chains on these stumps and pull 

 them out with the horses. This is the second operation. Then we would 

 lake by hand and pile up these roots and burn them up and get them 

 out of the way. 



Our idea all the time in clearing this land is to get our table clean; 

 get the surface free from obstructions. 



The third operation is to do the block work; that is, take a block 

 and tackle and fasten on the end of this block, use one block for hitch- 

 ing block and the other for pulley. We used one-half inch cable wire. 

 Hitch one of these blocks on the heavy stump, put a chain around an- 

 other stump and then hitch the horses on and pull these out with this 

 cable. We used 100 feet of cable. You can pull everything around 

 a radius of 75 feet, and then go on and set up your machinery again. 

 These stumps we pile up and burn. Then we have our table cleared 

 ready to use the big machine. The machine I have used is a large lever 

 machine, called the Stalwart. They claim that the machine will lift 

 500,000 pounds. This machine is set right over the stump, hitch on the 

 team and begin the work and out comes the stump. Sometimes we 

 would not get the large stumps out at one pull, but we have taken out 

 stumps five feet across with roots two feet around. 



A Voice — Why did you not use dynamite? 



Answer — We do use it but we don't use the dynamite until after the 

 stumps are out, and we do it in order to facilitate removing them into 

 piles. 



As this work is quite hard on a team we put one team in the forenoon, 

 and another team in the afternoon. 



A Voice — How many stumps can you pull in a day? 



Answer — I could not answer that definitely. One day we might pull 

 two or three times as many as another day. In ^pulling these stumps 

 they are pulled right up straight in the air. We dig holes under the 

 roots of the stump, put the chains under the root and fasten to the lever 

 of the machine by grab hooks, and then as the team goes out on the 

 cable line the stump comes up, then the men with long bladed ditching 



