Stump Grinding in Nome, TX

Stump Grinding & Removal Services in Nome, TX

Nome is a few hundred people and a great deal of land, and most of the stumps around it are out on the land. A pasture that ran cattle a generation ago, left alone for ten or twenty years, comes back as yaupon and Chinese tallow, and once someone cuts that growth down, the stumps are what is left in the way. There are yard stumps in town as well, beside houses and along drives, and those get the same walk and the same written estimate. What sets Nome apart is what else is in the ground.

This is old oil country as much as farm country. Decades of production in this far western corner of Jefferson County left lease roads, pads, tank battery sites and pipeline right of way across what now looks like ordinary pasture. A stump near a marker post, or one standing on an old built-up road, is not touched until the lines are located. Grinding or pulling across an active corridor is a different job with different rules, and an abandoned wellhead is not something to find with a machine. Those old roads and pads change the water too. On ground this flat, a raised strip a foot or two high holds water on its upslope side, and a lot of the wettest ground on tracts around Nome sits behind something built long ago. Stumps in that wet strip are slow to reach with an excavator, and a hole pulled there fills before it can be backfilled. Sometimes the right order is to fix the crossing first, let the ground dry, and come back for the stumps. Pine Island Bayou drains the country north of here, and the clay through this area holds water rather than shedding it. Harvey and Imelda both moved a great deal of water across Nome, silting ditches and damaging culverts, and many tracts drain differently than they did before. Season matters more than usual. On this Gulf Coast clay, February and March are frequently not workable at all, and pulling is best left to late summer and fall. Many properties take access off US 90 or a state route, and long drives with old crossings have to carry a loaded lowboy before the excavator reaches anything. An approach off a state highway falls under TxDOT, so the culvert at the road is checked before loaded trucks use it, not repaired after one cracks it.

The walk comes first and covers the whole tract. We look for markers, old roads, pads and anything that suggests a line, get locates where there is any doubt, and sort the stumps by what the ground is going to be used for. Pasture and hay ground means pulling, because tallow and yaupon cut or ground at the surface are back within two or three seasons and the field is where it started. A hunting or recreational tract may be better served by grinding, or by mulching the regrowth, which is a rotation and not a permanent fix. Stumps by the house are ground. Pulled stumps come out with the excavator and thumb, root plate attached, so tallow and yaupon have nothing left to sprout from. The holes are backfilled, compacted and dressed so a shredder can cross the field without dropping a wheel. Where the holes need more material than the stumps leave behind, we deliver fill dirt. Root balls are burned where TCEQ rules and the current Jefferson County burn ban position allow, or ground into mulch, or hauled off. None are buried. Yard stumps in town are ground below grade after public lines are marked through 811. Private lines such as a well line, the septic or a feed to a shop are walked with you. The chips go back in the hole, onto beds or onto the truck, and where grass is going back, the spot is filled with topsoil we deliver and leveled a little proud so it settles flush. If the same yard has a low spot that holds water after rain, it can be filled and reshaped on that visit, with the fall sent toward the road ditch and not onto a neighbor's property. Pulling costs more than grinding, and on a Nome pasture the mix matters as much as the count. Stump size and species, how many are pulled and how many ground, how far into the tract the equipment has to go, any wet ground or old roads in the way, what happens to the root balls and how the holes are finished all go into the number. It is given in writing after the walk, free.