Dry Stone Walls in New England
Jul 7, 2020 16:05:01 #
Brooklyn Connecticut. Not Brooklyn New York
Jul 7, 2020 16:13:00 #
Jul 7, 2020 16:17:29 #
Jul 7, 2020 16:34:07 #
Valenta wrote:
Please advise: what do they keep in - or out? 
Cows and sheep. Wherever you see dry stone walls you are seeing pasture land. The forests that you you see now are third growth- notice the diameter of the tree trunks. Usually less than 1 foot. That means that they were pasture lands in thye not to distant past. Tyhe North 1/3rd of the US was covered by glacier. All those stone are glacial till. When the land was cleared by the farmers all those stones were found in less than 1 or 2 feet below the surface. The farmers used them for borders or animal "fences", So that's why there are all those dry stone walls--You asked.
Jul 7, 2020 16:41:33 #
Many times there were split rail fences on top of the lower walls when they were used to keep stock in. The walls were also a convenient depository for stones found in fields that were cultivated. There was actually something of an east coast wood shortage back in those days.
Jul 7, 2020 17:12:38 #
quixdraw wrote:
Many times there were split rail fences on top of the lower walls when they were used to keep stock in. The walls were also a convenient depository for stones found in fields that were cultivated. There was actually something of an east coast wood shortage back in those days.
Interesting reason for that in parts of NY State and southern New England. Wood was use for building and heating homes and the making of Charcoal for early electric power. Charcoal burns much hotter thyan wood or even coal which had to com by rail. But tyhe wood was available and much cheaper. So the forrests of the area was cut down
Jul 7, 2020 17:30:36 #
boberic wrote:
Interesting reason for that in parts of NY State and southern New England. Wood was use for building and heating homes and the making of Charcoal for early electric power. Charcoal burns much hotter thyan wood or even coal which had to com by rail. But tyhe wood was available and much cheaper. So the forrests of the area was cut down
Yup, knew that. courtesy of a very interesting series of books by a fellow named Eric Sloane. Any you can find are worth a look and a read - fine drawings, interesting text.
Jul 8, 2020 07:00:07 #
steve49
Loc: massachusetts
Nice shot.
New England today is much more widely forested than it was 200 years ago.
There are rough old old walls everywhere through the woods around here.
Hard to tell from the photo if those are old walls or newer.
New England today is much more widely forested than it was 200 years ago.
There are rough old old walls everywhere through the woods around here.
Hard to tell from the photo if those are old walls or newer.
Jul 8, 2020 08:00:36 #
boberic wrote:
Brooklyn Connecticut. Not Brooklyn New York
Bloody difficult to sled down that hill in the snow. Cool shot.
Jul 8, 2020 08:52:48 #
Jul 8, 2020 14:20:39 #
Robert Frost wrote in his poem Mending Walls, "Good fences make good neighbors". Worth a read....
Bob
Bob
Jul 8, 2020 19:24:11 #
Jul 8, 2020 22:28:24 #
I was thinking the same thing as marantha. I am a native Californian and never saw such things until I had business trips to Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts in the 60's and 70's and saw the stone pasture fences made of stones. The natives explained that they were made from the stones buried in the soil back in Colonial days and were extracted and stacked by the farmers so they could use the land productively for grazing and farming. The fences built then are different in appearance but difficult to describe how.
Jul 9, 2020 14:17:05 #
Jul 9, 2020 16:39:43 #
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