My understanding is most stone "walls" in New England were the result of clearing stones from fields so they could be cultivated, and the stones were piled along the edges of the fields.
@bobvail1000 . They did both when the land was heavily laden with stone. Here in Southern Maine we live on a side hill. The locals had to do both walls to separate sections and piles to discard the rocks.
Have you considered doing more of these as your main video type? Looking into history about previous gardening techniques and whatnot? I think it has potential.
Hmm, maybe on the ancient art of companion cropping? For example, growing the Three Sisters together (squash, maize/corn, and beans) I tend to find a lot of cool botany books at the library :) @@WineberryHill
Nice video. I have boundary and interior walls on my land in NE Connecticut. Most of the walls were built before 1815(the summer that never was). The land was a "wood lot" because it was too rocky. There is also exposed ledge. I had to buy a shovel dozer and screen the soil to put in the house and lawns. The laws in the 1700s and early 1800s required physically establishing boundaries. Stone walls were the cheapest way. On better land than mine, the rocks kicked up when plowing were thrown into piles. In the winter when sledges could be used, they moved the rocks to piles along the line that they wanted to build the wall. I have a couple of areas, 1/4 mile back from the town road, where the stockpiles are still waiting to be used. Along the town road, are parallel walls on each side. They are documented in a deed to the town in about 1750. The marino wool craze definitely contributed but I think, from reading many old deeds, that most old boundary walls were built before the the sheep were brought in. I have seen stone walls that I believe were modified to hold sheep. Most of my walls are less than 3' tall. I have seen some 2' walls where they had standing stones with a notch on top. This allowed them to lay logs in the notches and make the walls tall enough to hold sheep. After 1816, a large part of the population of my town went with Moses Cleaveland to Ohio. Good Luck, Rick
Thanks! When I visit thrift stores, I'm always looking for Merino wool sweaters. One additional fact. Creating pasture for all those sheep meant cutting down many of New England's forests. Fewer forests meant less wood for fencing, hence those stone fences, which have the additional advantage that they don't rot.
My parents have a home on 2.25 acres in Connecticut, completely surrounded by stone walls. The stones were moved to the edge of the property so crops could be grown back in the 1700’s. The walls today are from 2.5’ to 5’ tall.
The DuPont family moved to Bayonne Nj to get away from the French Revolution. They had Merino sheep with them . Later they moved to Delaware . For details contact the DuPont Hagley library in Delaware . “Located on 235 acres along the banks of the Brandywine in Wilmington, Delaware, Hagley is the site of the gunpowder works founded by E. I. du Pont in 1802. This example of early American industry includes restored mills, a workers' community, and the ancestral home and gardens of the du Pont family.
The important question. How do I disguise a sheep? My mother would joke about New England rock farming. Her family once had orchards in Massachusetts. I was read old stories about native encounters. Field stone walls confused the natives because they had no concept of property ownership. And, natives didn’t understand that they were stealing fruit. So, I thought farmers walls had existed before Napoleon’s time.
My only guess is they made them look like different sheep breeds somehow. There certainly were stone walls prior to these events...but, at a tiny fraction of the amount that resulted from the merino sheep boom.
You are correct much older. And when you do proper research, it is amazing what you find. For example. Joseph Rockwell (1825): A traveler in Massachusetts, Rockwell recorded that the Wampanoag people "believe the stone walls and circles in the forests were made by the 'ancient ones,' a race whose knowledge and power far exceeded that of their own." Let's go farther back.. William Bradford (1620s): In his History of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford mentioned the mysterious stone formations in the region, stating: "The native people could not explain who built the strange stone walls scattered throughout the land. They said only that they came from an ancient race, older than their own ancestors."
I grew up adding to those stone walls every time we plopped a field. That was in New Hampshire about 8 miles foot Bellows Falls Vt. Interesting information about Merino sheep and them causing the proliferation of stone walls, but I think there are multiple causes for those walls and making the field tillable would be a major one too. I remember showing a couple of US government geologists around our farm when I was about 12 and in particle an area that had been cleared of trees but not cleared of stones. They were really thick on the ground so probably why they were never improved. Even after 150 years of picking stones the frost would bring up another crop every time a long used field was plowed. That said, there were smaller fields that never made sense to me and they well may have been sheep enclosures.
Very nice and informative, I always clear all fields of stone and deposit them near the plants that need warmth in winter as well as near and in water beds to warm up the water... Stone walls really complement nature, if done well
Ideas such as stone walls, will be carried onward and westward as folks moved from the east coast. So it might be the sheep, but it could also simply be, that is what they were used to doing.
There's also something I saw when I lived and worked on an Israeli kibbutz. Rocks clutter pasture and farm land. Piling them up gets them out of the way and stretched out in lines, controls erosion.
My understanding is most stone "walls" in New England were the result of clearing stones from fields so they could be cultivated, and the stones were piled along the edges of the fields.
That certainly accounted for some of the wall building, but the sheep-mania was responsible for a huge jump in thousands of miles of walls.
My understanding is that farmers used stone dumps rather than building walls unless they were creating pasture land.
@bobvail1000 . They did both when the land was heavily laden with stone. Here in Southern Maine we live on a side hill. The locals had to do both walls to separate sections and piles to discard the rocks.
Have you considered doing more of these as your main video type? Looking into history about previous gardening techniques and whatnot? I think it has potential.
I think thats a great idea! Feel free to send me ideas...I love that kind of thing.
Hmm, maybe on the ancient art of companion cropping? For example, growing the Three Sisters together (squash, maize/corn, and beans) I tend to find a lot of cool botany books at the library :) @@WineberryHill
I would have thought they brought the habit of stone wall building from old England, where several regions have had such walls for longer than that.
Yep, many reason we have stonewalls in NE. The events in this video describe one of the biggest stone wall building booms in history.
Nice video. I have boundary and interior walls on my land in NE Connecticut. Most of the walls were built before 1815(the summer that never was). The land was a "wood lot" because it was too rocky. There is also exposed ledge. I had to buy a shovel dozer and screen the soil to put in the house and lawns. The laws in the 1700s and early 1800s required physically establishing boundaries. Stone walls were the cheapest way. On better land than mine, the rocks kicked up when plowing were thrown into piles. In the winter when sledges could be used, they moved the rocks to piles along the line that they wanted to build the wall. I have a couple of areas, 1/4 mile back from the town road, where the stockpiles are still waiting to be used. Along the town road, are parallel walls on each side. They are documented in a deed to the town in about 1750. The marino wool craze definitely contributed but I think, from reading many old deeds, that most old boundary walls were built before the the sheep were brought in. I have seen stone walls that I believe were modified to hold sheep. Most of my walls are less than 3' tall. I have seen some 2' walls where they had standing stones with a notch on top. This allowed them to lay logs in the notches and make the walls tall enough to hold sheep. After 1816, a large part of the population of my town went with Moses Cleaveland to Ohio. Good Luck, Rick
super interesting, Thanks for watching!
Wow, as a lifelong New Englander , I learned something new today about our land.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks! When I visit thrift stores, I'm always looking for Merino wool sweaters. One additional fact. Creating pasture for all those sheep meant cutting down many of New England's forests. Fewer forests meant less wood for fencing, hence those stone fences, which have the additional advantage that they don't rot.
My parents have a home on 2.25 acres in Connecticut, completely surrounded by stone walls. The stones were moved to the edge of the property so crops could be grown back in the 1700’s. The walls today are from 2.5’ to 5’ tall.
Super-duper history lesson! As a fan of Merino wool socks I really appreciate knowing how they came to the United States. Great job relating the tale.
There might still be on the books a law making it illegal to remove a stone wall, in some parts of New England.
Norwell MA has that law.
Very good video. Thanks for posting this.
Glad you enjoyed it
The DuPont family moved to Bayonne Nj to get away from the French Revolution.
They had Merino sheep with them . Later they moved to Delaware .
For details contact the DuPont Hagley library in Delaware .
“Located on 235 acres along the banks of the Brandywine in Wilmington, Delaware, Hagley is the site of the gunpowder works founded by E. I. du Pont in 1802. This example of early American industry includes restored mills, a workers' community, and the ancestral home and gardens of the du Pont family.
Interesting!
We have all the same walls and sheep history here in Nova Scotia Canada
The important question. How do I disguise a sheep? My mother would joke about New England rock farming. Her family once had orchards in Massachusetts. I was read old stories about native encounters. Field stone walls confused the natives because they had no concept of property ownership. And, natives didn’t understand that they were stealing fruit. So, I thought farmers walls had existed before Napoleon’s time.
My only guess is they made them look like different sheep breeds somehow. There certainly were stone walls prior to these events...but, at a tiny fraction of the amount that resulted from the merino sheep boom.
@@WineberryHillEnjoyable, lighthearted subject. Well done.
You are correct much older. And when you do proper research, it is amazing what you find. For example.
Joseph Rockwell (1825): A traveler in Massachusetts, Rockwell recorded that the Wampanoag people "believe the stone walls and circles in the forests were made by the 'ancient ones,' a race whose knowledge and power far exceeded that of their own."
Let's go farther back..
William Bradford (1620s): In his History of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford mentioned the mysterious stone formations in the region, stating: "The native people could not explain who built the strange stone walls scattered throughout the land. They said only that they came from an ancient race, older than their own ancestors."
I grew up adding to those stone walls every time we plopped a field. That was in New Hampshire about 8 miles foot Bellows Falls Vt. Interesting information about Merino sheep and them causing the proliferation of stone walls, but I think there are multiple causes for those walls and making the field tillable would be a major one too. I remember showing a couple of US government geologists around our farm when I was about 12 and in particle an area that had been cleared of trees but not cleared of stones. They were really thick on the ground so probably why they were never improved. Even after 150 years of picking stones the frost would bring up another crop every time a long used field was plowed. That said, there were smaller fields that never made sense to me and they well may have been sheep enclosures.
Yep, many reason we have stonewalls in NE. The events in this video describe one of the biggest stone wall building booms in history.
There are small flocks of sheep that are left to graze on small islands along the coast of Maine.
This is so interesting! Thanks for sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you.
Interesting and well produced. Thanks 6:04
Thanks for the history lesson. I especially liked the Napoleon Dynamite pic.😂
I love the educational style videos. More! More!
Very nice and informative, I always clear all fields of stone and deposit them near the plants that need warmth in winter as well as near and in water beds to warm up the water... Stone walls really complement nature, if done well
Agreed!
Very, very interesting. I knew I did not the real story of the stone walls.
Very interesting- and it adds some nuance to that poem “Mending Wall” by that New Englander Robert Frost😊
Pretty cool! Thanks 🖖🐰🍷
Very neat!
2:50 you walked past what looked like to me an old root cellar is that what it was?
Good eye! Yeah it was.
There's stone walls like that in Kentucky too. I wonder if they're for the same reasons.
I wouldn't be surprised if "Sheep-mania" spread to all of those early states
Ideas such as stone walls, will be carried onward and westward as folks moved from the east coast. So it might be the sheep, but it could also simply be, that is what they were used to doing.
There's also something I saw when I lived and worked on an Israeli kibbutz. Rocks clutter pasture and farm land. Piling them up gets them out of the way and stretched out in lines, controls erosion.