It never ends. ;D
Far away.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10436/003.JPG)
closer,
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10436/002%7E2.JPG)
These stuck out of the ground just about enough to bother. Some are just about 3 feet across,either way.
Down past the stone wall are a few holes I need to get back too. But those holes are full or water. I better leave those alone for a while. I use my 40hp tractor for a digger. Would not make so much of a mess if someone would be so kind and buy me a backhoe. These are not the first ones that came out of the field and won't be the last ones either.
Looks like you have some BIG woodchucks in Maine! ;D
I've read about your rocks for years and all this time have pictured ones about the size a football and more of them on the surface. :o Didn't know you were talking about boulders.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10046/steak_meat%7E0.jpg)
I imagined rocks like these.
Crazy.
When I was farming, there was not a rock to be found on 300+ acres of hills ::)
Had to pay to get get them trucked in...
Ian
Quote from: Ianab on May 23, 2014, 09:13:32 AM
Crazy.
When I was farming, there was not a rock to be found on 300+ acres of hills ::)
Had to pay to get get them trucked in...
Ian
So, you where planting rocks? I've heard people call their place a rock farm before. never knew there really was such a thing. :D
If Ray ever invites you to a ROCK FESTIVAL bring your gloves, a strong back and some pain abatement medicine. He has real rocks! Gerald
Lee,I have ROCKS too. ;D And BOULDERS. ;D I dug a rock out the other day around the boulders. We have been mowing around it for years and it was about the size of my head. :o
In the second picture there is 4 boulders sticking up out of the ground. I have no idea how much cannot be seen.
This field had some low bushblue berries in it. It was never for hay,so was never seeded or plowed up for grass. Not much topsoil,that is why the blueberries did so good.
I am in the works right now of putting some herbs beds in around the boulders that I cannot get move. I dig out the grass,I put in some PT 4x4,I line it with some carpet,to keep the grass out,fill it back up and plant the herbs. This keeps the herbs from growing all over the place and maybe mixing in with another kind of herb. Than it's kinda hard to tell which is which with some herbs.
Your field looks like mine. I constantly pull boulders out. I've had several that the MF1552 can't lift. Here's a trick I use: take a set of tire chains to wrap around the boulder and drag it off. That's what I've done with ones I can't lift. I live on a hill so it's risky business to try to keep flipping them with the bucket!
I took a photo the other day and I thought of The C Farm. I didn't know where to post it, so I didn't, but then I find the perfect thread for it this morning. :D My father said there was a little rock sticking out in one of the corn fields. You can see about half of it. I was able to shove it into the hedgerow, but barely.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/14240/20140520_164245.jpg)
We have a pretty good crop of rocks growing down at my place. If anyone wants to dig them out ,you're welcome to them.we have sizes ranging from potato to Chevy van.
Quote from: Tim L on May 23, 2014, 06:56:48 PM
We have a pretty good crop of rocks growing down at my place. If anyone wants to dig them out ,you're welcome to them.we have sizes ranging from potato to Chevy van.
like a rock
Lots of settlers tried to farm the area where I live but shallow soils and rocks forced many to move or change occupations. That must give your tractor a good workout
Does Frost keep pushing them upward?
Probably the frost don't help. Than the ground settles down around them from running a tractor over the ground too.
This so called field is rough. I don't have the equipment to plow and harrow it. But even if I did,I would find many,many,many rocks. The top soil in that field is not much. Only a few inches in that part of the field. But 100 feet away it's a foot deep.
Quote from: Mooseherder on May 24, 2014, 08:07:21 AM
Does Frost keep pushing them upward?
Yes, very definitely.
Have similar (to thecfarms' pics) boulder-strewn land as the glacier of 10k yrs ago made the ridge I'm on a terminal moraine. Started moving out rocks and boulders 50 years ago, at first just with a shovel, some leverage, and a stone boat to skid them away with a 10hp LA 2-cyl John Deere
http://www.tractordata.com/farm-tractors/000/0/2/29-john-deere-la.html
About every 3-5 years, have to go back around the yard and remove the ones that the frost has pushed up enough to catch the lawn mower blades. The rock-removing equipment has improved over the yeas so now the forks on the FEL are used to pop them out (if 3' diam or less), otherwise some soil is brought in to add around the rock and grass planted. That will buy a few more years of time.
That's what I thought. Rock picking was another way to make money before they planted the Potato fields.
Today they would call that Child Abuse.
Ray,
Maybe you need to go into the "Pet Rock" business. I bet Poston can sell them for $300.
8) I'll be rich :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11412/FreeRocks.jpg)
Quote from: Mooseherder on May 24, 2014, 08:07:21 AM
Does Frost keep pushing them upward?
Yes a rock rises about a tenth of an inch per year.
Our new property has some rocks on it. :)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/DSC02239_opt.jpg)
I would have more money than I would know what to do with if POSTON, could sell them for $300.
beenthere made me think of the old way we use to dig rocks. My Father had some of this place rocked with a dozer when he came back from the war. Lower end of the field is great. The rest,not so great. Tim L mentioned a Chevy van is size. That is just what I can see.No telling how much is underground. I use to dig around them with a shovel,try to find a good place to wrap a chain around it and pull it out. I was the chain man and my Father would drive a 1954,NAA Ford. All we had was the hyds on the back. Sometimes we could get them out and sometimes we would have to put the dirt back in that we just dug out and admit defeat. We use to mow with a sickle bar mower. Some of the rocks the bar would just go right over them. Those was the lows ones and there was plenty of them.I am clearing out the old pasture and I find piles of small rocks. These are only one stone boat in size.Brought in by a stone boat and just dumped. Any rocks that they could not move will yield a good supply of rocks too. When they was plowing,I suspect the rocks was thrown at a bigger boulder. There is a pile or really big piles out in the woods of rocks that was dumped from a stone boat too. Number of loads? 100? who knows? Of course that was field many years ago. There is a stone wall on only one side of the road. Many years ago when the town was making the road better,the road commissioner asked my Father if he could put the right hand stone wall into the road to make it better. So that's where that stone wall went.
It always amazes me that in my area that rocks in roads seem to always sink down and rocks in fields seem to rise to the surface. :-\
I put mine to good use.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22511/mill_yard_013.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22511/mill_yard_014.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22511/mill_yard_015.JPG)
But I do have John ;D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/22511/DSCN2502.JPG)
Quote from: LeeB on May 23, 2014, 11:08:28 PM
Quote from: Tim L on May 23, 2014, 06:56:48 PM
We have a pretty good crop of rocks growing down at my place. If anyone wants to dig them out ,you're welcome to them.we have sizes ranging from potato to Chevy van.
like a rock
I see what you did there.... ;)
Quote from: Mooseherder on May 24, 2014, 10:52:37 AM
Today they would call that Child Abuse.
You got that right.... :(
Up on a lake where we visit in Vermont, the local legend is that when the settlers were clearing the fields in the early 1800s, they would dig up the rocks in the summer and then drag them out onto the ice in the winter. Once the ice went out the following spring, the new crop of rocks would sink to the bottom. You can see evidence of this today, even on Google Earth. The rock pile is the lighter-colored blob that takes up the better part of the right side of the cove, roughly in the center of this view. In the summer, it's often amusing to watch the uninitiated speedboat captains add their crash marks on Prop Rock.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greensboro,+VT+05841/@44.5910979,-72.3019025,542m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x4cb5cf3b05ac619d:0x8933b9dbac456d7a (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greensboro,+VT+05841/@44.5910979,-72.3019025,542m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x4cb5cf3b05ac619d:0x8933b9dbac456d7a)
It's no wonder that with generally poor soil, a very short growing season, harsh winters, and lots of rocks left behind by the glaciers, the farming population peak in the area coincided with the time that farmland west of the Appalachians opened up to white settlement. Once people in this area learned of growing seasons longer than 75 days, topsoil measured in feet instead of inches, etc., they took off and the fields have slowly been reverting to forest ever since. My dad likes to say (not sure if he is quoting someone) that if the US was settled from west to east, northern Vermont would still be untouched wilderness!
Good luck with your rock removal project. I had a friend that had a field like that he just got a guy with a backhoe to take a couple of scoops next to each one and rolled them in the hole and put the dirt back on top so they were a couple of feet down. You can get rid of some big ones like that with no lifting.
21incher.yea right. His field is not like mine.lucky him. :) Some of mine are 3 feet across. Need a five foot hole to bury it 2 feet below grade. Guess what I would fine digging? more boulders. ::) That is also why I don't dig the stumps out. All that I would find is more rocks and boulders.
My property has a few rocks, too. I had to move some "peeker" out of the way only to find some monsters...
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/30640/20131018_Rock_3_footers.jpg)
The biggest being about 6' x 5' x 4'...
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/30640/20131018_Rock_6_foot.jpg)
Not sure what I'm going to do with them, maybe just roll them down the hill...
ljohn
Those look like they came from my yard... sure you were not doing some midnight requisitioning? ;D
I started putting mine in a rock wall. Not easy with just a bucket and some to large to lift.
I am building a road across a bog. The bigger the better. ;D The road has been there long before I was thought of. There use to be fields across the bog. But my bigger is not all that big with just a 40hp tractor and one rock,boulder at a time. Than I take some smaller ones and fill in between the big ones. If I can't pick them up,than I take out the smaller ones out of the wall and make room for the bigger one.
Ray, if you just keep on digging out rocks, leaving the hole and piling the rocks, sooner or later you will have one of them highly valuable mountain lake front properties ;D
I all ready have the pond. The pond is where I've been digging to fill in the rock holes. ::)
Around here I have seen where they sandblast your house number in large rocks and set them in the corner of your driveway for about $500.00. They may be more valuable then slabs 8)
Bring on the sandblasters. ;D
I feel for you guys. No rocks here and a 15' deep creek has a clay bottom. There is not even gravel in the bottom.
Don't feel too bad. I have many soft spots up in the woods that are not soft anymore. ;D A few bucket full of rocks will tighten up any wet hole. Well more than a few sometimes. ;D
2 rocks,boulders and an old yard stick.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10436/a_rock_in_bluberry_field_2014.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10436/rock_in_blueberry_field2014.JPG)
These are both gone. I did find a couple more too. ::)
Rock mining has been good to you!