OT - Stone Walls on Old Farms

Brian G. NY · Apr 15, 2018

Up here in the mountains of Schoharie Co., NY, there are thousands of stone walls. Over the years, farmers down in the valleys have buried them or hauled them away to gain a lot more tillable land.
A few years ago, there was an outfit that came in with big semi trucks and bought many stonewalls here locally to be sold, I assume, for stonewalls being built at newer homes. That was a win-win deal for everybody.
Many of the farms up on the hills lost most of their good soil to erosion and many were bought by the NY State in the 30s and 40s for reforestation. When you walk around through the woods here, you will often stumble upon beautiful stone walls and house and barn foundations right out in the "middle of nowhere".
I took my dog for a walk last week to an old farmstead that I have visited many times over the years to take some more pictures of the stonewalls there.

DoubleO7 · Apr 15, 2018

It is not up state NY but way down state.........flying into White Plains, NY in the winter or before leaves on the trees and those stone walls were running all over the landscape.
Clearly visible from the airliner for awhile.

Clear the land of trees then have to remove tons of flagstone before you can plant much of anything.

JDEM · Apr 15, 2018

I had some workers for one of those companies taking walls arrested on my land. They were tresspassing and had stolen many dumptruck loads
of field stones from our walls. Their "defense" was it looked like nobody was using the land and it appeared to be abandoned. That was in
Otsego County just a few miles from the Schoharie border.

Billy NY · Apr 15, 2018

I have seen the same thing in this area, and over closer to the berkshire mountains, just before the MA/NY border. More round stone and some of those walls were in-tact, standing just as they were set way back when. I used to walk along them deep in the woods far from roads and such. Lots of fun to explore.

Mike(NEOhio) · Apr 15, 2018

Those are beautiful. I love to walk in the woods this time of year. We get up to the Boston area to visit the grandkids two or three times a year. Stone walls are common in the areas around the city where it isn't real built-up. Mostly low (2-3 feet) walls along property borders in stead of fences. I think they have laws about preserving them.

RedMF40 · Apr 15, 2018

Whoever built those walls and foundations really knew what they were doing. Extremely difficult to lay stones so they fit and remain standing over the years. Probably some small cemeteries back there, too. Beautiful work, thanks for sharing.

1206SWMO · Apr 15, 2018

Neat...I run across some in Missouri and Kansas..I took a picture of this one last week near Pawnee Station,Kansas..It went on for a long ways..

steve terplak · Apr 15, 2018

I spent a couple of years working for Elemental Landscapes in
Voorheesville. Worked for a guy named Jerry Parmenter.
Our specialty was hardscaoe but, specifically, dry-laid stone
walls. First half year, my sole job was carry stone, pavers
etc... then I graduated to laying. Learned enough of the
intricacies to build some decent walls myself but man could
my boss lay a wall.
There is a lot of thought behind it. He spent time overseas
studying wall construction with a big-deal outfit in England.

It is easy to spot a wall that will not stand the test of time.

JF in MI · Apr 15, 2018

Yup, when I used to live and fly in New England those walls could be seen all over in the winter. I cleared about an acre of land of stones there. Buried about half and gave away
40 tons worth to a wall builder (for loaning the help for loading).

Brian G. NY · Apr 15, 2018

I took a trip down to Westchester County last week and there are lots of nice stone walls back in the woods along the Parkway clearly visible now with the trees bare.
A few years ago, I was travelling on a road North of the Kingston Stone Ridge area and there was a beautiful stonewall winding back and forth along the road for miles.

rrlund · Apr 15, 2018

They do a pretty fair job of maintaining those around the Lexington Ky area.

Brian G. NY · Apr 15, 2018

(quoted from post at 22:55:44 04/15/18) I have seen the same thing in this area, and over closer to the berkshire mountains, just before the MA/NY border. More round stone and some of those walls were in-tact, standing just as they were set way back when. I used to walk along them deep in the woods far from roads and such. Lots of fun to explore.

I have in-laws that live in Colebrook in the NW corner of CT.
Not many flat stones in that area but there are a lot of beautiful walls built with round stones......Those people knew exactly how to set them so they would last forever.
I hauled about P.U. truckloads of nice flat stones and my B.I.L. and I built a nice round wall for his wife's flower garden.
He gets a lot of comments since flat stones are so rare there.

showcrop · Apr 15, 2018

There are stonewalls everywhere here in NH, and they are mainly the more round rocks because they came out of glacial till. Many people have a hard time believing that coming across a stone wall deep in the forest means that the forest was once cleared for fields or at least pasture. My mother told how worried her mother would be when her father was out blasting big boulders down into a size small enough to be loaded on the stone boat. Once he was able to move them he dragged them to the edge of the field and they became part of a stone wall. You see, this was before TV and farmers worked pretty much sun-up to sun down, at projects like clearing land. The objective was clearing the land and the walls were just a way to use the by product.

LA in WI · Apr 15, 2018

(quoted from post at 00:41:01 04/16/18) Up here in the mountains of Schoharie Co., NY, there are thousands of stone walls. Over the years, farmers down in the valleys have buried them or hauled them away to gain a lot more tillable land.
==============================

Interesting....when I was a youth and plowed hundreds of acres in the black soils of Iowa I never once hit a rock. Never.
We heard about stone walls, but could never figure out why someone would go get stones from wherever to built a wall or fence with them. We just bought wood and steel posts for property lines....and today most of them are gone because implements are so big today they need more room to turn around and livestock are in confined sheds.
LA in WI.

Harold Hubbard · Apr 15, 2018

In an old account book of my great gandfather?s, there is an entry of fifty cents a rod, for laying stone walls. I have no idea what that means per
hour, but it sure is a lot of stone to handle.

TimV · Apr 15, 2018

Pretty pictures, Brian. Lots of old walls and foundations here in northern NY as well, including some on our family farm. Some are over a hundred years old--young by the standards of, say, England, where some are more than a thousand, but still representing several generations of effort, both to build and maintain. I can't see a stone wall without thinking of Robert Frost's poem and the famous line that "good fences make good neighbors". I've known it by heart for years, but here's a version of Frost himself reciting it.
Mending Wall

MtMan · Apr 15, 2018

Where I live in N.E Pa. there are some nice walls left. There have been lots of them sold for the stone. I have read that in years past a man could pick the stones from a field and haul by horses to the wall and build a rod or 16.5 feet a day and usually got a dollar a day for it. Don't sound like fun to me.

SweetFeet · Apr 15, 2018

Brian G. NY,

Great photos! What an incredibly beautiful area.

It'd be interesting to see a photo of that farm back in it's glory days.

sms · Apr 15, 2018

Here in the Town of Neversink there is an
ordinance against disturbing the old walls
and foundations. I used to build
freestanding walls and retaining walls when
I was younger.

sms · Apr 15, 2018

Here is one I fixed up on my parents place.

RedMF40 · Apr 15, 2018

(quoted from post at 18:42:03 04/15/18) Here is one I fixed up on my parents place.

Nice looking wall--in good shape even with the big trees right next to it. Oh--nice tractor, too lol

BTW--is there an old town drowned under your reservoir up there? Sounds like there might be some stone walls underwater as well.

Brian G. NY · Apr 15, 2018

(quoted from post at 02:20:26 04/16/18) Brian G. NY,

It'd be interesting to see a photo of that farm back in it's glory days.

Back about 1958 when my now wife and I were but 17, there was part of the wall of the house still standing with stairs up to the second floor and part of the plaster wall still there.
I carved our initials in the plaster. I wish I had taken a picture for, as you can see, there is nothing but the foundation left now.
The house is gone but we're still here! LOL

Brian G. NY · Apr 15, 2018

Beautiful Picture!

sms · Apr 16, 2018

Yes, the NYC reservoir system drown many small towns. During low water you
can see the old foundations, roads, ect. My Mom used to swim in the
swimming hole in the old village of Neversink.

jacksun65 · Apr 16, 2018

We have tons of those walls along roads and fields here around lexington ky. A few years back we had some people come over from the old country and taught a class on building those type of
walls. The horse farms pay big bucks to rebuild their walls.

David G · Apr 16, 2018

I think they are beautiful, but all the rocks on my place are 100' deep.

2underage · Apr 16, 2018

I left Schoharie County and moved north many years ago but I do remember those stones well well. My father in law had a hilly farm and every time he plowed a field we would pick stones. Lots and lots of flat stones so I know where the material came from for those walls.

Most of those long lasting stone walls were not built by the farmers but by traveling groups made up of family members who traveled around the county side building those walls for a fee. The farmer or farmers who were having the walls built began collecting the stones from their fields over several seasons and supplied the stone when the wall builders arrived. The historian who told me about the wall builders said that it would be a big community event when the walls were being built and that they could lay hundreds of feet of wall in a day often with many farmers and their horse teams involved.

Take a few minutes and look around those woods with the stone walls and try to imagine the place full of people and horses all busy building those straight, long lasting monuments to the early settlers of this great country.

Frank 41 · Apr 18, 2018

KY has lots of them and mostly square still.

OT - Stone Walls on Old Farms

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