Matthew Simmons

Matthew Simmons is a smarter oilman than T. Boone Pickens. Agricultural real estate is an undervalued commodity. But there is also lots of good land that is covered with trees, including about 1200 acres adjacent to my home.

I was trying to figure out how our predecessors cleared tree stumps without gasoline. I ran into a guy at a bar who had done it as a kid.

1. Don’t cut the stump down to the ground. Cut it 5 or 6 feet from the ground.
2. Attach a chain to the top of the stump and pull it with a horse, or whatever.
3. Keep hacking away at the roots opposite of the horse until the stump is overturned.

A summer project is to figure out some winch mechanism that would allow a human to apply the force to take down a tree stump.