Red Barn Stone Walls
For Vermont farm families reliant on a hay crop to over-winter their livestock, the last thing they want to hear in summertime is the sound of their mowing equipment smacking into a rock. The tasseled grass of first-cutting has too often concealed blade-bashing protrusions; large and small stones that rise above the surface of the ground.
Relentlessly pressed upwards by winter frost, more stones tend to appear every spring. Each haymaking generation has attacked the problem in their own way. The ox-pulled stoneboat of the 18th century ferried stone to the field edge where it was fashioned into fences. When dynamite became widely available in the 19th century there was a frenzy of boulder blasting to further clear the fields. In the 20th century, the diesel-powered bulldozer unearthed and shoved boulders up into huge, mid-field heaps.
Three such mounds provided the stone for the walls I recently completed around the Big Red Barn in Winhall Hollow. Many thanks to the Key family (where a third and fourth generation now reside at the Barn) for having Dan Snow Stoneworks back in the Hollow. And speaking of generations, thanks to Archie for his excavator expertise. He’s the grandson of the first Clark family-member I got to work with, some fifty-odd years ago!