This wall is roughly 3-4 feet tall in some areas.
It's amazing to think about the amount of work that went into digging up, moving and then stacking all these boulders.
There at tens of thousands of miles of these 'walls' built our of necessity not decoration.
For those interested here are a couple links about these walls that criss-cross New England.
It’s folklore that the rocks breed in the winter, because new ones surface every spring. But it’s really just physics, the same way the bits of vegetables come to the surface in a simmering pot of soup. Just a lot slower. The till is many yards deep in some places and it’s filled with rocks. They could build walls forever and never get them all.
ReplyDeleteFirst thought was of the closing scenes of "Shawshank Redemption" with Red scrambling around a rock wall to find a hidden gift. Secondly is the terraced areas surrounding Machu Picchu in Peru. Every rock and follow on fill dirt was humped in by an unimaginable mass of labor. Once that was completed, they were able to build the actual Citadel.
ReplyDeleteMy parents lived in North Reading and had a 100+ YO stone wall. The area behind the house was wooded but also has a few stone walls going through the woods. Interesting if you got down low and looked across the wooded land you could still see the plow furrows that were perhaps 40 years old then (1960). Some of the trees appeared to be about 40 YO.
ReplyDeleteSimple response from me...that has always fascinated me but I have never really dug into it. Thanks for awakening an interest.
ReplyDeleteAnd now you got me thinking about Robert Frost.
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When I lived in the Maryland suburbs south of D.C. there were some old fallen stone walls in the deep woods. I could only imagine that the time in which they were built would have seen rolling fields, colonial era buildings, though not many. It's all built up housing tracts now, and I'd bet where the walls were is now housing, too. Wonder what would have become of the fence stones?
ReplyDeleteLived in Eastford for about 26 yrs; great town. Wouldn't be surprised if that photo was in the Natchaug Forest. Was clear-cut 150 yrs ago, now its old 2nd growth
ReplyDeleteI once owned some land in upstate NY very close to the VT border. Pretty hilly area that we deer hunted. I never ceased to be amazed at all the rock walls built up, along, and over hills that were even a chore to walk over, let alone carry and stack rocks on.
ReplyDeleteI have one in the back - an actual property boundary marker & shorter than these (it may have settled). Now mostly obscured by the trees that were allowed to take over. I look forward to reading these articles and passing them on. Thanks for the history lesson, Irish.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of manual labor involved is mind boggling, just yesterday I was looking at some stone walls here thinking about that.
ReplyDeleteHere in upstate New York we have Winona Forest. It is chuck full of stone fences. A beautiful sight.
ReplyDeleteThose walls always amazed me when I lived up north. It's like I tell people down here in central Texas - you want to know the difference between settlers and and today's (most) immigrants? Try clearing even a half acre of woodland into pasture without modern equipment.
ReplyDeleteMy father-in-law grew up in North Central PA. He told a story of coming home thru the woods with his dog. He jumped a stone wall and just about landed on a sleeping bear. He re-jumped the wall and took off running as fast as he could. When he turned around the bear was running in the opposite direction as fast as it could go. His brave loyal dog beat him home!
ReplyDeleteWhere we hunt in the Adirondacks, it surprised me at first when I found rock walls in thick woods. The more I hunted up there, the more I came to realize that the whole area was once clear cut and was farm land. Even found houses still standing from the 30's and 40's, miles from the nearest roads. Mother Nature reclaimed what was hers after people moved to population centers after WWII.
ReplyDeleteHaving moved rocks from picking stone from fresh plowed fields, I can appreciate the labor involved. Using a tractor with a bucket loader is back breaking work. Using a mule and a stone boat is a whole other level of pain and determination. Especially since they had to make walls; barbed-wire hadn't been invented yet.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
Before modern roads cut it all up, Mansfield Connecticut had the longest unbroken stone fence (not stone wall), over 10 miles long. The soil in much of New England is like a fruit cake; a thin matrix of soil loaded with rocks. You simply can’t dig it by hand in some places, you need a backhoe.
ReplyDeleteUnless, and until you have moved rocks from a field, breaking them up with a hammer and a wedge and a hand held rock drill bit, then moving them either with a bucket loader or a rock sled, you have absolutely no idea the amount of sheer human work and misery that those stone walls represent.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in New England, our house was on the old Washington-Jefferson Road (from NYC to Newport) that had never been developed. The old rock fence was still there from all those years ago. It ran for over 5 miles through neighboring undeveloped lands with only a few cutouts for passage to properties along the old road. The foundation for the old staging house was still on the property. It made for a great ground blind for hunting. I should've taken a metal detector to the place, but never considered back then. We did find enough artifacts from the place from just raking leaves and dirt away that it was exciting. Most people don't realize that most of those walls, even in New England were built by slaves and/or indentured servants as much as they we by the settlers. Every spring the snow melt would reveal so many more presents in the form of new rocks that something had to be done with them so they could plant crops. The heritage of the area is just danged fascinating when you take the time to figure it out. -Brewer96
ReplyDeleteOutlying Northern Virginia (Loudoun and Fauquier counties) are loaded with old stone walls. Legend has it they were called freedom walls, back in the day, because the slaves were told they could have their freedom once they got all of the rocks out of the fields. Which was impossible, because the winter freeze/thaw cycles brought new stones to the surface every spring.
ReplyDeleteThe stone walls in the Virginia horse country are spectacular.
As a boy working on a farm it was a yearly chore. Till the field in the spring and spend days afterwards picking rocks. Farmers son drove the tractor and we filled the front loader with rocks, when full he drove to a banking and dumped them.
ReplyDeleteUpstate NY, between the Adirondack Park and the St Lawrence Seaway, prime land for stone walls. Added more rocks than I care to remember to the walls that were already there. After I left for college my Father and Uncle finally sprang for a stone picking machine. It wasn't perfect, but at least took care of some of them.
ReplyDeleteI live in Naugatuck, CT. 30 feet out my back door is a long stretch of state and federal land. Federal for the watershed of a dam and state as part of a state forest made up of various sized plots of land both large and relatively small. The entire area has an interesting history, from the New England thru the Industrial Revolution to the peak of industry and the decline. Less than 100 feet from my door is a 10 mile bridle/walking trail that was once a rail line, with many cuts through the rock at the base of what was (is) unofficially known as Swede Hill, after the large number of Swedes that once farmed the area. Its crisscrossed with numerous rock walls of various sizes. Our local historical society has old drawings, paintings and photos of the area, showing almost the entire hill being clearcut with the exception of certain spots that have sharp dropoffs and exposed ledge. Ive spent countless time roaming that area since I was a kid. It always amazes me the amount of labor it took to move all that rock and to clearcut the hill. Thats what I love about New England. You dont have to go very far to be surrounded by history.
ReplyDeleteI’m always amazed that any of the Maine farm boys went back to farm in Maine after fighting in Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi and other parts of the South. They sure moved an endless amount of rocks working the land back home.
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