RDP # 60 – Quarry
New England was one of the first place in North America that Europeans set down roots. I’ve always wondered why. Especially in New England.
Those people were farmers and if there’s one thing you can say about this area is that it’s not great farm country. Not only is the weather awful, but there is no topsoil in most places. It’s not a bad place for orchards and dairy cattle, but everything else? It’s pretty hard to find a large, flat area with good earth.
Up the driveway, stone fence holds up the garden. Owen hauled those boulders from the middle of the woods
Between the hills, mountains, boulders, and trees, there’s almost no earth you can plow without moving a lot of rocks first. That’s from where all our stone fences emerged. They were not created to divide areas of land. The farmers just needed a place to put all the rocks.
This is also why you find rock walls in the middle of nowhere. The middle of the woods. Where the stone fences were put didn’t really have a lot to do with location, just how far they could haul that rock before they said: “Okay, this is as far as I am going!” The horses always agreed.
Eventually, someone got the bright idea to dig up the rocks and pound them into gravel. It turns out that you can never have too much gravel and sand in this world. We also have a lot of big holes in the ground that have filled up with water because no one is using them anymore.
Is there a child who, one hot summer’s day, won’t take the plunge into an old quarry? This doesn’t always work out well. Over the past few decades, cities throughout the region have been trying to fill in those holes. Too many kids diving in, hitting unexpected rocks and drowning.
Also, it would seem that diving into a quarry is the easy part. Getting out can be fraught with challenges.
Last night, my son pointed out this his house is actually built on an old gravel pit. That probably explains why they have such a nice, flat piece of ground … but also explains why the backyard is about 12 feet lower than the front yard.
New England has quarries. Lots of them. In use, out of use, full of water. That’s what you do in a land full of rocks and roots. Dig!
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Thanks for a great post. We had our Victorian pile (house) in England surrounded by a stone wall. It was however a softer, red stone and after some 120 years or so the stone started ‘fading away’. We got back to Switzerland before anything more sinister happened but the wall of our property here in France, also nearly 100yrs old, crumbled and thundered down a steep slope in a heavy January downpour. We haven’t recovered yet and it will cost a bomb. Try to sell the house without the wall…. will be interesting.
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You have serious wall issues. We do too, but not stone walls because around here, all the stones are granite and trust me, it never falls apart. No, we have crappy wood under the vinyl siding that’s crumbling. It’s just a house. We don’t need a house, right?
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;(
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The old swimming hole? Even that is disappearing.
Too many bureaucrats around.
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Too many drowned teenagers, too. That’s the problem. Under the water, there are rocks. It’s not an even smooth hole. It’s full of jagged rocks. Those companies were NOT supposed to leave the holes open, but they didn’t care. The thing is, they are NOT swimming holes. They are quarries that filled up with rain and snow runoff.
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I do like that retaining wall in your driveway. What a job that must have been, though!
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Yes. Owen worked REALLY hard. Those are HUGE rocks and they were very, very heavy. But it’s a hell of a wall. Not going to fall down anytime soon.
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Thanks for the smile because you really do wonder how our ancestors fed themselves and their livestock. 🙂
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I think they ate badly (winter was starving time) and the stock had to be really HARDY.
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I remember as a kid visiting my uncles farm we would go stoning. There was a large flat bed that was dragged by horses through the field and we would throw the stones onto the flat bed. That’s how he cleared the field for planting.
Leslie
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But eventually, they had to do something with the rocks. I bet they built a wall. Or a fireplace. Or maybe a house. But you gotta use the rocks for something because there are so many of them.
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I think they just threw them in the wooded area.
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I love this post, Marilyn, great job! “The farmers just needed a place to put all the rocks”! Wonderful observation. I can’t think of any better statement to describe that famous Yankee hardheadedness!
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It’s true, though. Everyone thinks there’s a deeper meaning, but there were just a LOT of rocks. If they built a single big pile, they would have had to keep walking all the way with each rock. But by building a wall, the rocks sort of kept up with them. Some people got a bit artistic too (why not?), but that’s also why these “fences” are never cemented. They weren’t BUILDING anything. They were moving rocks. So they could plow.
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