Tony brought his digger with the tree-removal attachment. The attachment wasn't what I had imagined, but it did the job. It was a long snout of iron almost 2 metres, shaped like a flat-topped capital letter A.

The process was pretty simple....stick the "fork" into the ground on one side of the tree and lever it up though any roots, snapping them off. Do the same on the other side.

Then nose-dive directly under the tree itself. If that didn't lever it out Tony used the trunk to push and pull it to loosen the stump. When it was loose enough he levered the tree out of the ground and pushed it over.


When it was all done he switched attachments and used the scoop to grab and lift each stump and gently drop it into my tipping trailer. I carted them off and tipped them out into a future burn pile. They are very green and contained in a solid ball of soil, It'll take 12 months for them to shed their soil and dry out. There are 24 stumps in the pile. To my annoyance I noticed two more that need attention. They are away from the set we did. I knew they were there, just forgot on the day. That is, they aren't new/extra problems....not more dead trees.

It took me about 10 minutes each trailer run to do a round trip. While I was gone Tony filled in his time scraping up the area, tidying up as best he could. I could have organized a few metres of soil and that would have given Tony something to fill the holes with. As it is he did an impressive job tidying up. If each tree ball was, say, 50 litres in size that means we removed more than a cubic metre. Somehow Tony scraped it all into an almost neat surface. I've been returning with soil and processed horse manure and am micro-managing the tidy-up now with 20 litre buckets. That is, I show up with a trailer full of 20 litre tubs of soil/manure and pour them into any obvious divots/gouges/holes. Its not a golf green by any means but its getting there.

A few kilometres from my place is this olive grove. The trees were not treated for the Lace Bug invasion, and there's been no work done on them since. You can see from the photo rows and rows of the trees are dead. I worked in that grove a few years back, cleaning out all the overgrown blackberries, pruning the trees and picking the olives. Its a shame to see it return to such a ruinous state.

Extra note:
As I was cleaning up, picking up smaller broken branches that Tony's scoop couldn't get, I picked up a tree tag. It was from when the trees were first planted, now decades ago. Incredibly, the printing on the tag was still visible as was the handwritten variety name: Manzanillo. Of the three rows of manzanillo olives that were originally planted, there are less than five surviving trees. Take note if you are thinking of planting a few hundred olive trees...