Cactus Cooler Cans Under the Cushions

I hate strongholds. Unless they’re good strongholds.

A stronghold is anything that’s hard to change. If you can’t quit overeating, it’s a stronghold. Cancer that won’t yield to prayer is a stronghold. Unassailable faith in God is also a stronghold; it’s just a positive stronghold.

I have rocks and stumps in my yard. I don’t know if they have anything to do with the supernatural, but they are stubborn obstacles to my enjoyment and improvement of the lot. Remember Joe Starrett in Shane? He had a big stump in a field he worked, and he never quit striving to get the stump out, because it drove him nuts. The novelist had the same feeling about stumps that I do.

I got myself a subsoiler for my tractor. It’s a big hook that goes down in the ground. You can hook it to stumps and use the hydraulics to lift them. It works well on small stumps and fairly big rocks, but there is a limit to what you can do with it. There are some big stumps on my land, and I have seen rocks half the size of cars.

I had three stumps and several rocks jutting out of the ground in an area where I wanted to put blackberry briars. I already have the plants. I managed to get the stumps out this spring, but the rocks would not yield. I started digging around them to find out where the edges were.

Today I dug around a couple of really annoying rocks, trying to find where they ended. The rocks were up against each other, and I figured that if I could find a way to move one, the other would then have less to anchor it, and I would be able to extract it, too. I unearthed a sort of horn on one rock. I decided to loop a tow strap over it, put the tractor in low, and pull.

When I took off, I was surprised to see a patch of ground the size of a yoga mat lift up. The two rocks were actually one.

I pulled the rock up halfway out of the ground. Then I propped it up with a piece of 4×4. With the rock in that position, I was able to loop the strap under it. The rock had a waist to it, so once the strap was around it, it could not come off.

The big danger was that if I reached under the rock with the strap, it might fall back on me, and then there I would be, waiting for death with a large rock on top of what used to be an arm. I avoided the problem by using a Johnson bar to shove the end of the strap under the rock. I then pulled it through from the other side.

I am painfully aware that many people die every day from doing stupid things. It’s very important to try not to be stupid when you use tools. That sounds simplistic, but it’s the truth. Most people who go to emergency rooms with horrible tool-related injuries did something stupid. Reaching under a half-ton rock held up by sand and a small piece of wood is very stupid.

When I took off with the tractor, the rock came right out, and I dragged it easily. That surprised me. It makes me rethink everything I knew about stumps and rocks. Maybe the strap is a better tool than the subsoiler.

Now I have a six-foot-long rock sitting in my hard. I’m considering using it for landscaping. I could probably sell it, but it doesn’t look too bad in the yard, and it’s a conversation piece.

The shovel in the photo is 44.5″ long, so that gives you an idea how big the rock is.

I feel fantastic. It’s great when an annoying problem suddenly gives way.

There are still two rocks I really want to uproot. Maybe it can be done. I hate getting in there with a shovel and doing all that exploratory work, when I have a tractor. Sometimes you have to do things the hard way.

If you need a thousand-pound rock, let me know. I am always open to offers.