The Mystery of New England's Stone Walls (WEIRD ORIGIN STORY)

If you want to hear the @VermontPublic podcast from Brave Little State about the origin of Stone Walls and Rock Walls in New England, go here: bit.ly/3HPfbaX
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[@marjoriejohnson6535]

Almost 100 years ago my father cleared rocks from fields building stone walls. His father aalso had a bluestone quary with the stones going to cities for sidewalks. When he had to leave farming due to a back injury and they built a ranch house he still built a stone wall behind the house to hold back the bank behind the house. My husband was facinated and dad told him how to build a laid stone wall. 8 years later my husband built his first wall. Within 12 years he was building laid walls for artist, lawyers and doctors. it is a lost art.

[@marjoriejohnson6535]

Ps...he wound up repairing several old stone walls on farms...

[@Kelikaku]

@@marjoriejohnson6535 In Hawaii, there are Tongans who build rock walls from the volcanic rock fields that range for miles and miles, in the vast Hawaiian desert that exist on the Big Island. It was a source of amazement for me.

[@brett76544]

ONe thing for the blue stone walls, make sure there are little chips to leave what is below solid. I have seen various blue stone walls here in NE PA and you can tell the ones put in by someone that knows what they are doing. Now the walls around fields, they are there just to be a place to put the stones. I built a deer stand with a base of 7 ft high and square of blue stone walls, with a door, then on top a 10x10 platform that is enclosed. For the Flint lock season after Christmas I have stayed in that thing for a few days. (pop out a window, put the insert in and fire up a portable wood stove and it is nice and toasty to hunt and sleep in.

[@Shibalvr]

@@Kelikaku the same here on Maui! ❤❤❤

[@catherinehubbard1167]

What a wonderful comment! Thank you.

[@vonduus]

We got those stone walls all over Denmark as well. Every winter the frost make some of the buried rocks surface, so the farmers are still collecting stones every year. Mind you, where I come from, the soil has been used for farming for more than a thousand years, and farmers have collected stones during all this time, but nevertheless there are still new stones coming out of the ground every year. You would think that at some point all the rocks have been collected, but probably not. These walls are even marked on topographical military maps, as I was taught when I was a boy scout, while learning to find my way around in the middle of the night, only with the help of a compass and a map. Cheers from Denmark

[@bjarnemcdonald6333]

And now the old stone walls are great habitats for birds, critters and bugs. Especially the old trees that grows on them

[@puddintame7794]

Soon EU laws will forbid farming so no rock problems anymore!

[@chadrobert116]

@@puddintame7794 "Mister EU, do not worry, I am not farming, I am Spring quarrying rocks."

[@katherinekelly5380]

I always wondered why a field didn’t run out of rocks after being farmed for a few hundred years, how reassuring that fields farmed for 10 times as long can still produce stones ! 🤣😄

[@JohnDahleAL]

I got to see my great granddad’s farm in Western Norway and was amazed at the amount of dang rock in their fields. I now know why they thought the Planet Hoth known as Minnesota was so desirable of a destination. You don’t find that kind of stuff at that quantity in the prairies.

[@feewatt]

From the UK. I remember as a child watching my Father build stone walls in the farm fields. Fascinating to watch him do it. Like assembling a huge jigsaw puzzle and some are still standing some 50+ years later. Surprisingly strong structures.

[@canislatrans8285]

The ones here in the NE US were probably built mid 1700's to mid 1800's, and maintained by the farmers into modern times. A lot of people left farming after WW2 it seems like, and abandoned the farms. Then the trees started growing through them and groundhogs burrowing under them. Dry stacked and well made, that even the totally neglected for 100+ years ones can still be spotted in sections in the woods in the winter.

[@MiceAndMinecraft]

@@canislatrans8285 yeah in the UK some of our drystone walls date back literally thousands of years.

[@feewatt]

@@canislatrans8285 I lived in a village here in the Lake district part of the UK that has a pre Christian fertility stone built into one of the walls called, The Priapus stone. Has the holes still in it where the women would stick their fingers hoping to become fertile.

[@xhogun8578]

​​@@canislatrans8285 modern walls then! Sorry my house dates back to 1400s and the field stone walls are probably much older.

[@canislatrans8285]

@@xhogun8578 oh yeah, def! If I want to feel old history here, I have to find an old stone arrowhead or ax head. Or a giant oyster midden.

[@carbonstar9091]

I grew up in New England and it was not unusual to find random rock walls walking around in the middle of nowhere.

[@chubbymoth5810]

And now you know that there was a field once. So sometime it was near a dwelling.

[@inspirationfollows9692]

Also grew up in New England. We had woods and hiking paths behind our street full of random rock walls. So much fun to make into snow forts as a kid!

[@johaquila]

That's really strange. I have never seen the rock walls in England do that.

[@chucknorris277]

New England was nearly all clear cut for sheep in the 1800s. When the industry fell, the trees grew back. The stone walls stayed in place of course.

[@sebastiansilverfox6912]

Can't say I've ever encountered a walking rock wall before. Are the rocks particularly lively there or are the drinks just extra strong?

[@sparrowgarden1401]

those stone walls weren't just piles of rocks. They were carefully constructed without mortar and lasted for all those years in spite of people and animals climbing over them and plants growing in them. Some of the rocks were extremely large and would have taken team work to put in place. The trees that grew near them ended up providing windbreaks and shelter for smaller wildlife. Those old maple trees truly were huge. I remember them on my grandparents farm. Us kids could sit inside one hollowed out tree stump. The beautiful huge maple trees lining the road to grandma's house were cut down in order to widen the road.

[@ducthman4737]

Families were a lot bigger in those days living many generations on a farm. So enough hands to build the walls. And better don't have trees close to the road. They killed more than one when crossing the road. The tree always wins.

[@Kelikaku]

These rocks remind me of the Roman Wall in the North of England, built by the Romans to protect themselves from the hordes of ancient Celts that threatened them. I visited that wall when I went on a bicycle trip through England, it's still there and it is an impressive work of ancient architecture.

[@ducthman4737]

@@Kelikaku Most of Hadrian’s Wall stones were quarried so that they all had more or less the same size to speed up construction.

[@chrisenglund9269]

Never occurred to me before that "team" work could mean horse teams. It sure;y did for those great walls.

[@lyndonwhitfield1151]

@@chrisenglund9269 There is certain type horse drawn sled that is called a "rock boat" now days mainly used to train horses with.

[@williamofhler5613]

My father shared his Irish heritage with his 6 kids regarding stones and fields. While he would drive his yard tractor pulling a cart us kids would follow picking up rocks from our 2 acres. Brings back the most non fond memories of childhood 😅

[@JHattsy]

Here in Scotland you see these walls lining...practically every farm where I live, they're all made up from countless fieldstone, the fields that have been plowed for 200+ years STILL produce them, you still find them in the soil. Every year around main sowing season you'll see farmers pile up 3-4 foot tall piles of fieldstones. It's crazy to think how many are in the ground & how often they were used as a building resource for homes, walls, ovens, sheds.

[@richardgoddard37]

My granddad was a stone mason in Leicestershire UK, and he also worked on dry stone walls. Apparently some are hundreds, if not thousands of years old, and are held together by friction, gravity and skill.

[@Afrimoo]

Yup up in Scotland there is an entire sunken settlement called Skara Brae built from dry stone, it's about 5000 years old. It's absolutely breath-taking and a testament to the skills of those who built it as their home. Im from the UK (north west England) on borders of two areas where our dry stone walls are built of sandstone, other area's used slate or limestone or even boulders, some are built geometric and neat and other styles are more natural looking. The dry stone is everywhere here even in modern cities as well as rural area's. Our dry stone builders are wonderfully talented people and help keep our heritage alive in this ole world of ours.

[@ECole-le7we]

This was fascinating, Morgan. As a licensed teacher and teacher supervisor who is now retired, I can verify that in addition to being a talented storyteller, you are a Master Teacher as well. The two can go hand in hand.

[@leedmmaster7743]

Thank you for the insight! I find Morgan a very captivating storyteller.

[@anngifford9053]

I agree I really enjoy watching and listening to this video. You kept me very intrigued and interested as you told this story. If facts I never even thought of like dairy is diminishing in Vermont. You don't think about those things how area evolve and change. Very good video enjoyed this teaching moment. 😊

[@grantquinones]

Maybe you could work this into the curriculum instead of how to use anal beads and drag queef story hour.

[@GuitarGuyATX]

Cool man. Interesting.

[@glenbolding9883]

I don't know why anyone would want to teach school in today's screwed up world...🙄

[@piperleelee]

Rock walls were also used for property boundaries. Thanks for the history lesson on rock wallls. It was very interesting.

[@markstott6689]

Yorkshire has dry stone walls everywhere. We also have lots of sheep. Swaledales are a very common breed. Whilst I have seen lambs escape through wire fences more than once and rescued a couple, escapees from well maintained high drystone walls is negligible. Plus, maintained drystone walls don't rot like wood or disintegrate like plastic.

[@daveturnbull7221]

The walls also provide a place for the livestock to shelter from the elements if they want.

[@northernnaysayer1240]

As someone with sheep and drystone walls in Yorkshire, I'd say that's not even remotely true. 🤷‍♂️

[@daveturnbull7221]

@@northernnaysayer1240 Well I'vve often observed them doing just that in the Scottish uplands.

[@markstott6689]

@@northernnaysayer1240 The only sheep I've ever seen get over a drystone wall were Herdwick twins who used a stone stile in Langdale. Cue mother ewe sounding distraught and failing to do the same.

[@ValleyOakPaper]

Yes, a proper drystone wall that's about chest high will definitely contain sheep. I saw many drystone-walled sheep pastures when I lived in the UK. They do need to be maintained, but it takes decades of neglect before they look like Morgan's walls.

[@Sweetandsavoryfarmette]

Tom Wessels wrote a book I think you would enjoy. It explains the rock walls and other heritage indicators found in New England forests. The title is “Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England”.

[@gkdvrcb]

Came to the comments to recommend that book! Also, Tom Wessels did a KZbin version of the book, in the forest of course. The channel is called @NewEnglandForests

[@glenbolding9883]

Thanks to the two of you for the lead about that info! Much appreciated! 😊 THIS video was informative also, and much appreciated! I'm a stinky old truck driver who sees those walls all over the northeast, and I've always been interested in the what when and how.

[@microharman]

Its pretty common in the Mid-Atlantic states especially in the Appalachian areas. Those larger rocks would be hauled there by teams of horses or oxen. Much of the people trying to plant cereals eventually gave up and moved to the Midwest once they figured out how to plow the prairie grasses.

[@canislatrans8285]

Yeah, way too many damn rocks lol. There is 1 farm I know that has stone walls still. You can tell where they never had crops. It's wooded now, but there are rocks of different sizes all over it like crazy. I guess they grazed sheep in there way back. The open land with crops there have very very few rocks.

[@ambilaevus7607]

Yep. In Ks there's a rocky section.... I always wondered why they didn't do rock walks there given it'd keep coyotes from running into herds.

[@MRRookie232]

Thanks for the content Morgan., you’re a great storyteller. Would love to see more of the pigs please. Love from Inglaterra

[@lovelearning7467]

Impressed with your research and understanding of your farmland, not to mention your presentation skills!

[@Jenn.linsey]

Morgan, coming from an instructor, you have a gift for teaching! You're a very confident and knowledgeable speaker, thank you for the educational break from most of the influencer garbage on KZbin these days ❤

[@elliecrew]

Love the “let nature do its thing” mentality ❤

[@sunriseeyes0]

This was a super cool history lesson! It’s awesome that you decided to let the walls return to the earth.

[@cyclemaster46]

We have rock walls in Kansas. To clear fields of rocks. The gov. paid the farmer to build the walls they had to be just so tall and thick. A way for farmers to make extra money during the depression.

[@MamaStyles]

As someone’s who not too distant ancestors /family lived maybe an hour and a half or so north of Peacham in Quebec (and some east of you in New Brunswick) this topography topic is right up my alley. With only horses and their bare hands they tamed the savage wilderness to farm,sugar etc (when they emigrated in the late 1600s my ancestor was a painter.) It pleases me so much you live off this same land and although I live in southwestern Ontario, I can live vicariously through you Morgan❤

[@kristineteall368]

My grandparents are from Quebec as well, and immigrated to the US when my father was young. Now that my parents are gone, heritage and family history is a great deal more important to me than when I was younger. I suppose as we get older, we learn to appreciate their journey and the hard work it took to get there a lot more.

[@judykinsman3258]

Thanks Morgan for the great lesson on Vermont rock walls. What a storyteller you are!

[@cholieandresa]

Agreed

[@shAnn0n1]

This was "THE" story about GOLDSHAW FARM. So interesting and easily interpreted. Thx Morgan.

[@diannasgardenmenagerie967]

I love and admire how you steward your farm. Thank you for being a KZbinr!!!!

[@Oldjohn52]

"Stone Boat". Horse drawn contrivances that were dragged across "Pasture" or "Farmland" every spring. Frost in winter pushes rocks upwards. In order to plow, you gotta take the stones away in the spring. Back and forth across the land. Then, when folks got to the Ohio River valley, they sent letters home and said "Leave the stone boats there and come to Ohio, the topsoil is forty feet deep." That's why there are abandoned farms and stone walls all over New England.

[@nleaven]

Interesting. I grew up in Ohio in former cornfield neighborhood. I'm now in CO where the suburbs have to buy topsoil since it all blows away to KS.

[@ginacirelli1581]

I'm up in Newport City, and I had to replace the original retaining walls in front of my 1939 house's garage. When we couldn't find a match for the original cement blocks, I decided to have my landscaper create fieldstone walls. He literally dug them out of his father's nearby farm for me. What a gorgeous job he did, and I'm still getting compliments almost four years later.

[@shauxuhrwilsongrim]

I gotta admit, your videos are the ones I'm the most exited about. Never though this would happen when I randomly got the video about Abby's chastity belt on my recommendations 😂

[@caseyleichter2309]

The whole video was fascinating, but I particularly enjoyed the deep dive into geologic history. Glaciers scouring the continent, creating so many of its contours, is exactly the sort of thing that makes me wish time travel was possible, because I would love to go back and see that happening (from a safe distance!). Out here in Washington State, the "scablands" in Eastern Washington aren't directly caused by glacier or ice sheet action, but by an enormous ice dam breaking some 20,000 years ago. It released a lake's worth of water that surged across the area powerfully enough to scrape away everything above the bedrock. The ice dam reformed, and the process repeated itself over the next few thousand years, creating a huge landscape of "coulees" that are the regions' distinctive look to this day,

[@alexholiday441]

Dang the barn is being built so fast can’t wait to see what the final build looks like!

[@fintanb8413]

There are similar walls in Ireland, mostly the west, called dry stone walls. Bad ground had the rocks taken out of the ground to make it arable and used for boundaries, it's a an art form. I've seen recently metal cages that rock is put into, lined with planks on the outside and filled with cement, nice effect.

[@ducthman4737]

Ireland and Scotland also had a mile of ice on top of them.

[@canislatrans8285]

The ones where I live in central Maryland actually looked like those same walls, just different kinds of stone. Dry stacked and topped with parallel long stones.

[@jenniferr2057]

Those caged rocks are called gabions.

[@creative227]

I’m a rock lover. This was a fascinating episode! Thank you Morgan!

[@juliegale3863]

I live in South Devon, UK. Many of our fields and road edges are made up of large stones from the fields moved to the edge. There to be built up into banks with soil and with trees and bush hedges planted on the top. The stones still come up when ploughing and are a bane to the farmer. It also left us with very narrow lanes with banks each side, just wide enough for a horse and cart. Here they are dark red sand stone but anyone emigrating to USA a few hundred years ago would know just how to deal with your large stones popping up in the fields.

[@icefirewolfodell9946]

You take amazing care of the land and the wildlife I never thought about doing my part in helping wildlife and nature grow until I found you a few years ago. I learn more and more from you, how to take care of the nature around us

[@bkm2797]

This was Well Done, another interesting tale from Gold Shaw Farm. I was thinking a lot of this type of fence line was built because the British and European's built a good deal of these stone walls in their homeland. Really enjoyed listening in, thank you Morgan.

[@26beegee]

That was really interesting! When traveling around England and Ireland I loved their rock walls. I have used lots of rocks in my landscaping (we had a glut of them when we cleared our property) and stacking them in a stable way is tricky and takes some planning. The walls that stand for centuries are real art forms.

[@nanmagrath5564]

My family is from Rhode Island, and I recognize on your farm another piece of typical New England that makes me nostalgic - you have a (likely) huge (definitely) glacial erratum in the area between your house and old barn and enclosure entrance - all you see now is the top surface of that rock - I have seen Pablo Barn Cat sit on it.

[@deed5811]

Frost heaves - can confirm. My grandfather constantly pulled rocks out of fields every time he plowed. Year after year, decade after decade. Sometimes we would even find beads and arrow heads.

[@BBDoesTheThing]

Im enjoying your info stories and I appreciate you and ur editor doing yalls best to keep it from being controversial. It allows me to listen to the whole story and reflect on the information.

[@pamelavargas6811]

I love how you enjoy researching, and I appreciate that you share your findings with us....❤

[@smlorrin]

While visiting England, one of the most beautiful areas to me was the Lake District because of the lovely stone walls that covered it.

[@diane9247]

Morgan, you have a gift for splainin' stuff. It comes out fast and fascinating! There are stone fences out west here, too, built by cattle ranchers on land with plenty of rocks. They were especially handy in areas with a lot of volcanic rock, which is extremely rough and almost sticks together. There are (or were) miles and miles of them. Now, many have fallen apart, but you can still see them from Google Earth if you know where to look, or even just driving around. Because the landscape is so sparse and dry where they were built, they are easier to spot. Anyway, thanks for the TED talk on stone fences!

[@canislatrans8285]

There are even still ruts from the Oregon trail visible in some areas!

[@californiadreaming567]

My father had a wooded piece of land in Pennsylvania Water gap. We would hike and find they perfectly built stone walls that were three feet high in perfect condition. The forest just grew back around them. Thank you for telling us.

[@AmandaKerkhove]

I was just able to finish your uncomfortable questions video, and I know Allison isn't a fan of being on camera, but I'd love to see a video about ways you've worked together to overcome some of the challenges you two face with your ADHD. As the partner of somebody with ADHD I find that we are also struggling with some of the same things you've mentioned. Enjoy those farm doggies for me!

[@randalrides]

Life-long New Englander. I have always loved the old stone walls that dot the country roads here. A great reminder of what used to be, how we are in a constant ebb and flow of shaping the land in one way, and Mother Nature taking her turn to take back what we have done.

[@thedieiscast9729]

I live in the north of England, our local farms are surrounded by mile after mile of these dry stone walls. Different areas build in a different way but all have in common the sheer hard work of building them.

[@brucealvarez9263]

One point in the Brave Little State story you didn't mention is that the stones were often piled along an existing fence line. The wooden post/rails or a "zig zag" (rails without posts) are long gone but the stones remain. Additionally, I doubt many of the stone walls in New England were laid carefully to form a true barrier to keep animals in as the ones in Ireland/Scotland/England are. At least the ones I've seen, including a few on my Vermont property, are made of random shaped stones, generally without flat surfaces, of all sizes and shapes as are the ones in your walls. They may have been piled up in a line but it is the width of the line of stones that held the height, not careful dry stone wall construction. That is a craft and an art. Piling the spring "crop" (Vermont's biggest non money making agricultural product) on top of a well crafted stone wall would not work out well.

[@RJ-go3sn]

Morgan, thanks for the history lesson! So interesting, especially when something is not how you thought it was! I appreciate your being cognizant of the land overall, and how future generations will find it! (I wonder if this KZbin video explaining the rocks will still be available for them to watch in say- 80 years??)

[@usaturnuranus]

This will be the most interesting thing I will have the good fortune to stumble across today. I love listening and learning from smart people who know how to work the land and respect the history. It's always a mind opening experience for me. BTW - loved the Floyd clip as well as the "indelible" bit. Awesome dude! Subscribed. :)

[@stevewilson5546]

You are a Master Storyteller as well as historian. I occasionally watch other farm videos, but have to turn them off after a few seconds or minutes. You are the best, and no one comes close. I often come to your site when I am sick and tired of the news. As well as a storyteller and historian, you are a great healer. All my thanks.

[@ruthanne9914]

A wonderful video, Morgan. Thank you so much! And it sounds as though, although some of the techniques and materials might differ, you're farming pretty much as good farmers always have--in a way that gives you the infrastructure you need and 'leaves the farm in good shape." Thanks again.

[@kristinesullivan4316]

Thanks for this lesson. I’ve always wondered about the stone walls. I lived in Connecticut for years, my property had the crumbled stone walls. 😮😊😮😊

[@ThrawnFett123]

I would point out too, herd animals tend to follow straight walls naturally. There was an entire ancient hunting technique that relied on it where you could channel herds by putting gradually sloping up rock walls up to a point where they would become trapped. It isn't a guarantee or anything, just a tendency. But these rockwalls would also help keep animals in naturally. You can even see it today driving past farms. How often do you see animals in the middle of the field versus bunched up in a corner. Nowadays, through time to build and technology, we have the ability to keep even the most stubborn goat inside a defined area. But how much more common is it to see the animals grouped alongside a line than just openly grazing, even on massive fields. These stone walls likely helped keep animals in, even starting off simply as the easy pile line you could tow a plow towards easily. As the effect on animals was noticed, people likely began expanding them hoping for both an easy place to put the newly emerging rocks and an actual barrier to keep animals in or out of certain areas

[@tanneradams20]

Not gonna lie. I watched an older video from maybe a year ago. The total difference I’m seeing in you is crazy. I hope you’re feeling as great as you’re lookin man.

[@hhdhpublic]

The musics bit too loud and covers your voice at points. Otherwise excellent video :3

[@rowanrollo9226]

Thank you I have this problem with a lot of videos, I nearly turned this one off.

[@jd9351]

Love that you are such a history and science nerd. Don't forget Vermont was originally part of New York! 😉

[@mattshaffer5935]

I remember my first trip to Vermont to meet my future in-laws. I was fascinated by the rock walls hidden in the woodlands and learned the history. Thanks for the reminder! I’m a big fan of fools errands and would try to rebuild your walls 😂

[@chox2001]

I’m a qualified certificated dry stone Waller here in UK . The only people having new walls built are people with plenty of money. Some existing walls are maintained but very few farm walls are built. 25 years ago I taught people to build the walls the farmers would collect all the stones and pile them where they needed the next wall when enough stones were collected we would build the wall.

[@shipperturtle]

I am not sure why this episode's monologue is written so beautifully compared to your other content but who ever wrote; bravo, great work. It's not easy to make stories this captivating, especially about rocks!

[@evquinn2156]

I think he writes them all…

[@jaymony123456]

the music is too loude in the beginning. beside that super video!

[@tylerhough9124]

Happy this video found me. We’ve got thousands of these walls in my area of New England. I’ve frequently wondered about their history over the years…even as recently as last week. Thank you for sharing!

[@mitchwitter6061]

With the new fences paralleling the stone wall, you're building a wild life corridor between the two that will become home to many different types of wildlife. I can remember hunter in the Midwest complaining that farmers removing all the fencing to make larger and larger fields were killing the habitats of these game birds, rabbits, foxes and the likes. I know you have plenty of habitat for wildlife, but I'm smiling thinking of this being done back home. As a kid, walking the fences, scaring up game. I was never a hunter, not that anything is wrong with it, just not me. Your channel is soothing nostalgic of a simpler era of my life. Thank you.

[@marikotrue3488]

As much as I enjoy the stories, I enjoy the "outtakes" such as the "indelible" moment just as much. Perhaps due to some long long ago English course I took, I find myself using words that are actually correct, but seem unusual (at least for my daily discourse) so I end up using an app or search engine to get the definition. I live in the New England area, admittedly I am not extremely well-coordinated but I have tripped and fallen over numerous stone walls which have been left to naturally return to their roots (sorry really bad mixed metaphor). So I have conflicting emotions about Morgan's decision to leaving them out and about.😉

[@MiceAndMinecraft]

Drystone walls are a very British thing but different regions have different styles, and they tend to be more prevalent in the North than the South. There’s a particular skill to building them, and having tried to repair a damaged one, it’s not as simple as it looks!

[@ellenwheat3608]

When i traveled to Ireland years ago, i was struck by the landscape under the plane, green fields with rock walls in random connected patterns, like you showed in your narrative. It was clear the rock walls were old and why they were there. It was fun to hear your Vermont history on this topic.

[@britzel71]

I truly enjoyed this video 🙏 Thank you. I loved all the footage of the scenery. Your property is simply stunning. I also will continue my broken record saying how much I adore your farms name. Extremely thoughtful and pays homage to those long gone.

[@lydias2012]

Sorry I had to leave for a second, we had a small earthquake in So Cal and just as I clicked on your video. Apparently you know how to shake things up Morgan. I am fine it was a tiny one. Okay back to the show.😘

[@kirani111]

Oh word? I'm in socal too but it must've been too weak to feel it here

[@GoldShawFarm]

Whoa! That's scary! Be safe! Glad to hear it was a tiny one.

[@lydias2012]

@@kirani111 I am in Woodland Hills on the couch kicking back and it was teeny tiny. I did not even get up. Just left the site to see where it was. So far don't know.

[@kirani111]

@@lydias2012 oh cool! I'm in Burbank. Nothing like a little earth shake to wake you up 😂

[@lydias2012]

@@kirani111 It was a 3.5 it was by the coast in Topagna. It was one of those did a big truck drive by?No I am pretty sure that was a quake.

[@cyrilthefish]

Just started the video, but a quick note: That music was completely drowning out your voice in the first 30seconds. Far, far too loud. :3

[@RonaldJohnson-zr8vh]

Thanks for making this. When I moved to Connecticut more than 40 years ago I wondered many of the same things. It seemed obvious the stone walls would not contain sheep. Then I learned they would build wooden fences on top of the stone walls. This would get the fence posts out of the ground. They wouldn't rot so quickly, requiring replacement. Else your farm could only grow so big. If your farm was too large, you would spend more time replacing fence posts and no more time to farm. Also at "The Old Newgate Copper Mine and Prison" I learned they would let prisoners out on good behavior to build stone walls for farmers. It was said a "good man" could build 12 feet of stone wall in a day. That's work!

[@danalebherz7044]

If you've ever read Stephen King's IT, there is a wonderful interlude where one of the characters describes a year on his family farm in Maine. Every spring started with the "rock harvest" where they'd go through the fields and remove rocks large enough to break the farm implements. The character asked his father why there were more rocks every spring when they always removed them. The father didn't have an answer. Now we know!

[@s.marley8028]

I grew up in Connecticut and was taken to a lot of museums when I was younger especially the Pequeot Museum and I always took this knowledge for granted and recently took my partner who didn’t know anything about this! Thanks for making this vid and spreading this knowledge even further!

[@mudcatfrank7537]

Rocks in fields are also a problem Here in the upper Midwest (Southern Minnesota and northern Iowa) Instead of walls there are piles of glacial till rocks at the corners of fields. Every so often the farmer would hire high school boys to walk a field accompanied by a tractor and a flat-bed trailer to pick up rocks.

[@thormusique]

Thanks for this! I just stumbled upon your channel, and being a Vermonter myself (pretty much in the centre of GMNF), I really appreciated your discussion of stone walls/fences. As a friend from SoCal likes to say, you can always spot a Vermonter by their fascination with piles of rocks. Cheers!

[@Gamble661]

I live in Massachusetts and there are rock walls everywhere, including the middle of nowhere. The explanation is very simple; New England is very rocky, as he said, because of the last ice age. So while clearing their fields to plant farmers removed the rocks and built the walls along the borders of their fields....that's it. The one's in the middle of nowhere are there because it wasn't always the middle of nowhere, it was once cultivated land. You also find small family cemeteries in the middle of nowhere all over New England, there are three in my town alone, in the middles of the woods, that I doubt many people even know are there.

[@juanedenburg6766]

Dude your looking good keep up the hard work. I watched a older video of you before this one and I see a different you. Keep up the hard work and thank you for your stories

[@paulcantrell01451]

New England helicopter pilot here... All of New England is covered in stone walls, more than the average person might guess because a lot of land that was formerly fields has re-forested, with the stone walls much more difficult to see. But when we fly, we see this amazing network of walls. And it's not just Vermont... Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, etc. The amount of labor that went into building all those walls is hard to quantify. And like others have said, when you clear your field, you're never done, because winter will bring up a fresh crop of rocks each year. When I visit states down south, I love how, when you want to dig a hole, you just grab a shovel and dig. Here in New England you better also have a pick and a sledge hammer, because you're going to have to deal with a bunch of boulders as you dig. It's exhausting!!!

[@SadisticSenpai61]

Minor correction: The glacier weathered the mountains and "smoothed" them as the ice moved across them (this also had the effect of the glacier picking up lots of rocks). The mountains long pre-existed the glacier. The White Mountains portion of the Appalachians formed roughly 124-100 million years ago. They were formed by a hot spot according to Google. The rest of the Appalachians were formed by continent collusion about 500-300 million years ago. Basically, the only reason the White Mountains are considered part of the Appalachians is because of where they're located. They technically aren't related to the rest of the mountain range.

[@jilltremblay4528]

Morgan, you are the BEST. No way are you boring-ever. Also you look a little lighter, congrats!!!❤️❤️

[@Jennifer62389]

One of your best videos Morgan. Very interesting info, great story teller.👍👏👏

[@minaparish5687]

Awesome! Who knew I'd be so fascinated by the history of rock walls? Not me, and yet I was ! Thank you, Morgan 😊

[@katherinekelly5380]

I can imagine, a 100 or 200 years from now, somebody growing something where the orchard is and being amazed at how wonderful the soil is - then finding these videos through what ever way back machine available and thinking they struck gold a second time !

[@carlycharlesworth1497]

That was really interesting Morgan. Thank you for sharing some of your lands history and the country's history too. I love history, it's always been more interesting to me than much of the now is lol. Weird I know but true none the less. God bless you and Alison and all those you know and love. Have a great week!

[@mattgeekman]

I grew up picking stones on my grandfather’s farm in Wisconsin. A few hundred acres, and the reason we picked them was to prevent damage to the harvesting equipment. We even had different target maximum rock sizes depending on what was being planted. I remember learning to use a clutch at 5 years old and the tractor would be placed in granny low gear and I would take turns steering while it idled. The rest of the family would pick stones into the loader bucket until it was full and dad would hop on and take the load to the rock wall to dump it. Kids in my class never wanted to hold my hands for activities because they were so calloused from that and playing outside in the dirt. It’s crazy thinking back on some of those experiences.

[@sharonmcnally4712]

As a person who picked all the rocks of of a large plateau in British Columbia to put in a hay field, I enjoyed your TED talk. I always like those Vermont stone walls as a child. Maybe my Irish ancestors helped build a few of them.

[@Nembula]

45 years ago I took on my Aunt's farm. She was in her 70's. She showed me how clearing brush was used to augment the fences. It makes a formidable fence when done right. It also can be used to encourage boys to want to get up to catch the bus. School is easier than making a brush fence.

[@craigduddles5650]

I share Sponge Bob's feeling about stones. Love them. They do not till the hay fields in our little patch of Vermont but they cut the hay twice a year most years for haying. I do find stones when I dig trenches and ponds too so the frost heave does have some supply farther down. Will be using ours mainly for landscaping. Love them stones (and Brave Little State, another good one is Happy Vermont)

[@mojavegold-]

Thanks for the interesting history lesson! I recall seeing the old rock walls in New England forests when I was a kid visiting my grandparents. I had never made the association with glacial moraines. As a note - my mother was a Shaw in a neighboring New England state. And just in case there might be some connection - no, we don't want our rocks back!

[@independentpatriot1775]

In the 1800s some government agency (I think it was the department of agriculture) did a land survey of New England, and they found something absurd like 180,000 miles of stonewalls. With a little math it became abundantly clear that it is impossible to attribute that amount of work to a 200 year period of colonization.

[@mariajosefinamontes4999]

I loved watching the bbc farm series and what I loved about it was the creation of hedge rows and how they used living trees and bushes to not only create a barrier but also to provide fresh fruits and nuts, as well as a way to dispose of rocks and branches, leaves, etc that would other wise be scattered around the farms. This then Decomposes and is able to fertilise the living hedge rows too. Win win situation.

[@harry130747]

These walls are very common in the UK in upland areas. Made from stone gathered up from adjacent fields as part of the original land clearance to make them cultivatable. Lots of work but free materials and lasts forever. A definite skill needed.

[@paulnix8443]

I love that you dedicate to a subject.

[@bobwightman1054]

I'm a dry stone waller in the north of (old) England. Always fascinated that New England also has them. I'm currently rebuilding walls on my brother's farm that are between 220 years and 350 years old so they can last a long, long time. We know the age of many of the walls as they only appeared after the local enclosure act (1796 in this case) but others are a bit of a guess and figuring them out from old documents rather than maps. Sometimes you find clues such as old bottles that the original builders left in the wall. The walls are a mixture of stones picked from the fields after ploughing and quarried stone - there are lots of small "quarries" dotted around the farm where they took an outcrop of rock and dug away at it. It takes a bit of "getting your eye in" to pick them out. Depending on height of wall, etc., etc. I'd expect to do around 2-3 metres of walling per day (when I was a lot younger that would have been 3-4m per day) so you can see how much work and time they took. The trick to stopping sheep jumping walls is to have the top stones slightly overhang the rest of the wall. Doing that means a wall only has to be about shoulder height to be effective. Second/third the comments about Tom Wessels' channel, he knows his stuff

[@AnneTrent]

I learned a ton of new things today! Thanks for another great vid!

[@AnYaDang]

I made a few stone walls on my farm “by accident”… same story, just getting them out of the way and a few years later, it looks like they’ve been there forever.

[@Altaree1]

The best moment was when you looked up a word. I loved that. Great video! Thanks!

[@BobU2b1]

I encountered those when I worked in the Pocono Mountains forty years ago, and I've wondered about them since. Nice job.

[@oleran4569]

When I was a kid growing up in rural Kentucky, most cleared fields had a "rock pile" at one end. As Mr. Gold mentioned, they just appeared out of the ground with weather changes. Those rocks were collected since they were bad for good farming practice and added to the piles. In those days, many, if not most, of the backroads had a heavy rock base with a gravel surface. Our county had portable rock crushers that were available to be borrowed by local residents. The crushers had a drive wheel that connected to any tractor with a flat belt pulley PTO. We (the local farming community) were allowed (encouraged) to use those crushers to turn those rock piles into gravel which was the spread on the roadway closest to the rock pile. Those who did this were forgiven their county taxes for the year. My dad loved it. He didn't have to pay county tax and I got to spend a week crushing rocks into gravel....and the road was freshened for the year. A win, win for him and a good workout for me. There were no safety guards on the infeed "maw" atop the crusher, which terrified my mom, but dad just grunted, gave me my orders to go do it. It was actually a pretty good time working with neighbors to maintain our own roads.

[@mewrightnow]

I enjoyed your video and you are mostly correct but there is more! As a New Englander I have learned a few things. The rock walls were used to keep animals corralled, in a sense. Maybe not sheep, but cows and such would not bother hopping the rock barrier, except for the occasional errant bovine or equine, as long as there was sufficient food to graze on they remained within. Yes the soil here is rocky and yes they needed to extract them for farming, so they pushed them to the boundaries of their property. It was mostly for keeping farm animals in, but, over time it became a part of the surveying descriptions for "land patents". Land patents describe the "meets and bounds" of property by describing somewhat permanent fixtures like lakes, streams, rivers, ravines and such. The rock walls became a part of that land description for property boundaries. This is still the lawful means of describing land that is owned through a land patent ( which every property "owner" should learn about!). In New Hampshire it is illegal to disturb stone walls for that reason, because it disrupts the lawful description of the surveying of such land. if one can get a land patent, it takes such land out of the local tax purview. Unless you do, the land is owned by the state. Look at your title of deed for "your" property. It lists you as the "tenant"! Thus you do not own the land you think you own: The State claims ownership, you are a renter. Just try and not pay property taxes and you will find out who the landlord is( the STATE). If you get allodial title to your land through a land patent, you own it outright without ANY superior claims!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK IT UP!!!!!

[@triplecoutdoor7495]

We had one here like 4 feet high. rock from the field. From 100 years of working the land.

[@a1tanner528]

Long time viewer, very new New Englander. Back in the rockies where I grew up rock walls were only seen around cemeteries or some times churches. The rock walls here in Vermont are fascinating

[@Aard_Appel]

You are looking good, getting fitter I assume. Hope you are feeling well! Really glad that you share the stories, animals, and plans. Thanks for doing this, the videos always make my day. Greetings from The Netherlands.

[@Zoronden]

I am visiting Ireland right now and seeing these walls everywhere, it is very cool. Thanks for the great video!