Stone On A Farm

This earth, geologists say, was once an immense expanse of heated vapor,

which, gradually cooling at its surface, as it whirled and sped through

space, contracted and formed a crust, which we know as Rock or Stone.

This crust has since been broken through, and tilted up into ranges of

mountains and hills, by the action of internal fires, by the

transmutation of solid bodies into more expansive gases; and the

fragments orn away from the sharper edges of upheaved masses of

granite, quartz, or sandstone, having been frozen into iceberg,

floating, or soon to be so, have been carried all over the surface of

our planet, and dropped upon the greater part, as those icebergs were

ultimately resolved, by a milder temperature, into flowing water. When

the seas were afterward reduced nearly or quite to their present limits,

and the icebergs restricted to the frigid zones and their vicinity,

streams had to make their way down the sides of the mountains and hills

to the subjacent valleys and plains, sweeping along not merely sand and

gravel, but bowlders also, of every size and form, and sometimes great

rocks as well, by the force of their impetuous currents. And, as a very

large, if not the larger portion of our earth's surface bears testimony

to the existence and powerful action through ages, of larger and smaller

water-courses, a wide and general diffusion of stones, not in place, but

more or less triturated, smoothed, and rounded, by the action of water,

was among the inevitable results.



These stones are sometimes a facility, but oftener an impediment, to

efficiency in agriculture. When heated by fervid sunshine throughout the

day, they retain a portion of that heat through a part of the succeeding

night, thereby raising the temperature of the soil, and increasing the

deposit of dew on the plants there growing. When generally broken so

finely as to offer no impediment to cultivation, they not merely absorb

heat by day, to be given off by night, but, by rendering the soil open

and porous, secure a much more extensive diffusion of air through it

than would otherwise be possible. Thus do slaty soils achieve and

maintain a warmth unique in their respective latitudes, so as to ripen

grapes further North, and at higher elevations, than would otherwise be

possible.



The great Prairies of the West, with a considerable portion of the

valleys and plains of the Atlantic slope, expose no rock at their

surfaces, and little beneath them, until the soil has been traversed,

and the vicinity of the underlying rock in place fairly attained. To

farmers inured to the perpetual stone-picking of New-England, and other

hilly regions, this is a most welcome change; but when the pioneer comes

to look about him for stone to wall his cellar and his well, to underpin

his barn, and form the foundations of his dwelling, he realizes that the

bowlders he had exulted in leaving behind him were not wholly and

absolutely a nuisance; glad as he was to be rid of them forever, he

would like now to call some of them back again.



Yet, the Eastern farmer of to-day has fewer uses for stone than his

grandfather had. He does not want his farm cut up into two or three-acre

patches, by broad-based, unsightly walls, which frost is apt to heave

year after year into greater deformity and less efficiency; nor does he

care longer to use them in draining, since he must excavate and replace

thrice as much earth in making a stone as in making a tile drain; while

the former affords shelter and impunity to rats, mice, and other

mischievous, predatory animals, whose burrowing therein tends constantly

to stimulate its natural tendency to become choked with sand and earth.

Of the stone drains, constructed through parts of my farm by foremen

whose wills proved stronger than my own, but two remain in partial

operation, and I shall rejoice when these shall have filled themselves

up and been counted out evermore. Happily, they were sunk so low that

the subsoil plow will never disturb them.



Still, my confidence that nothing was made in vain is scarcely shaken by

the prevalence and abundance of stone on our Eastern farms. We may not

have present use for them all; but our grandsons will be wiser than we,

and have uses for them which we hardly suspect. I reinsist that land

which is very stony was mainly created with an eye to timber-growing,

and that millions of acres of such ought forthwith to be planted with

Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, White Pine, and other valuable

forest-trees. Every acre of thoroughly dry land, lying near a railroad,



in the Eastern or Middle States, may be made to pay a good interest on

from $50 up to $100, provided there be soil enough above its rocks to

afford a decent foothold for trees; and how little will answer this

purpose none can imagine who have not seen the experiment tried. Sow

thickly, that you may begin to cut out poles six to ten feet long within

three or four years, and keep cutting out (but never cutting off)

thenceforward, until time shall be no more, and your rocky crests, steep

hillsides and ravines, will take rank with the most productive portions

of your farm.



In the edges of these woods, you may deposit the surplus stones of the

adjacent cultivated fields, in full assurance that moth and rust will

not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal, but that you and your

sons and grandsons will find them there whenever they shall be needed,

as well as those you found there when you came into possession of the

farm.



I am further confident that we shall build more and more with rough,

unshapen stone, as we grow older and wiser. In our harsh, capricious

climate, walls of stone-concrete afford the cheapest and best protection

alike against heat and frost, for our animals certainly, and, I think,

also for ourselves. Let the farmer begin his barn by making of stone,

laid in thin mortar, a substantial basement story; let into a hillside,

for his manure and his root-cellar; let him build upon this a second

story of like materials for the stalls of his cattle; and now he may add

a third story and roof of wood for his bay and grain, if he sees fit.

His son or grandson will, probably, take this off, and replace it with

concrete walls and a slate roof; or this may be postponed until the

original wooden structure has rotted off; but I feel sure that,

ultimately, the dwellings as well as barns of thrifty farmers, in stony

districts, will mainly be built of rough stone, thrown into a box and

firmly cemented by a thin mortar composed of much sand and little lime;

and that thus at least ten thousand tuns of stone to each farm will be

disposed of. It may be somewhat later still before our barn-yards, fowl

inclosures, gardens, pig-pens, etc., will be shut in by cemented walls;

but the other sort affords such ample and perpetual lurking places for

rats, minks, weasels, and all manner of destructive vermin, that they

are certain to go out of fashion before the close of the next century.



As to blasting out Stone, too large or too firmly fixed to be otherwise

handled, I would solve the problem by asking, "Do you mean to keep this

lot in cultivation?" If you do, clear it of stone from the surface

upward, and for at least two feet downward, though they be as large as

haycocks, and as fixed as the everlasting hills. Clear your field of

every stone bigger than a goose egg, that the Plow or the Mower may

strike in doing its work, or give it up to timber, plant it thoroughly,

and leave its stones unmolested until you or your descendants shall have

a paying use for them.



A friend deeply engaged in lumbering gives me a hint, which I think some

owners of stony farms will find useful. He is obliged to run his logs

down shallow, stony creeks, from the bottom of which large rocks often

protrude, arresting the downward progress of his lumber. When the beds

of these creeks are nearly dry in Summer, he goes in, with two or three

stout, strong assistants, armed with crowbars and levers, and rolls the

stones to this side and that, so as to leave a clear passage for his

logs. Occasionally, he is confronted by a big fellow, which defies his

utmost force; when, instead of drilling and blasting, he gathers dead

tree-tops, and other dry wood of no value, from the banks, and builds a

hot fire on the top of each giant bowlder. When the fire has burned out,

and the rock has cooled, he finds it softened, and, as it were, rotten,

on the top, often split, and every way so demoralized that he can deal

with it as though it were chalk or cheese. He estimates his saving by

this process, as compared with drilling and blasting as much more than

fifty per cent. I trust farmers with whom wood is abundant, and big

stones superabundant, will give this simple device a trial. Powder and

drilling cost money, part of which may be saved by this expedient.



I have built some stone walls--at first, not very well; but for the last

ten years my rule has been: Very little fence on a farm, but that little

of a kind that asks no forbearance of the wildest bull that ever wore a

horn. The last wall I built cost me at least $5 per rod; and it is worth

the money. Beginning by plowing its bed and turning the two furrows

together, so as to raise the ground a foot, and make a shallow ditch on

either side, I built a wall thereon which will outlast my younger child.

An ordinary wall dividing a wood on the north from an open field of

sunny, gravelly loam on the south, would have been partly thrown down

and wholly twisted out of shape in a few years, by the thawing of the

earth under its sunny side, while it remained firm as a rock on the

north; but the ground is always dry under my entire wall; so nothing

freezes there, and there is consequently nothing to thaw and let down my

wall. I shall be sorely disappointed if that wall does not outlast my

memory, and be known as a thorough barrier to roving cattle long after

the name of its original owner shall have been forgotten.