digging rocks at The C Farm

thecfarm · May 23, 2014, 08:47:37 AM

It never ends. ;D
Far away.

closer,

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.

Alcranb · May 23, 2014, 08:57:32 AM

Looks like you have some BIG woodchucks in Maine! ;D

LeeB · May 23, 2014, 09:04:44 AM

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.

Didn't know you were talking about boulders.

I imagined rocks like these.

Ianab · 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

LeeB · May 23, 2014, 09:19:46 AM

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

GAB · May 23, 2014, 09:56:37 AM

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

thecfarm · May 23, 2014, 10:10:06 AM

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.

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.

DeerMeadowFarm · May 23, 2014, 10:29:15 AM

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!

Dave Shepard · May 23, 2014, 02:28:10 PM

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.

Tim L · 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.

LeeB · 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

Ken · May 24, 2014, 06:48:38 AM

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

Mooseherder · May 24, 2014, 08:07:21 AM

Does Frost keep pushing them upward?

thecfarm · May 24, 2014, 08:27:56 AM

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.

beenthere · May 24, 2014, 10:33:28 AM

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.

Mooseherder · May 24, 2014, 10:52:37 AM

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.

WDH · May 25, 2014, 08:18:27 AM

Ray,

Maybe you need to go into the "Pet Rock" business. I bet Poston can sell them for $300.

sprucebunny · May 25, 2014, 08:33:08 AM

8) I'll be rich :D

nk14zp · May 25, 2014, 08:39:38 AM

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.

Jeff · May 25, 2014, 08:40:58 AM

Our new property has some rocks on it.

thecfarm · May 25, 2014, 08:44:50 AM

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.

pigman · May 25, 2014, 10:07:13 AM

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. :-\

Peter Drouin · May 26, 2014, 12:24:51 PM

I put mine to good use.

But I do have John ;D

DeerMeadowFarm · May 27, 2014, 03:33:38 PM

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.... :(

alecs · May 27, 2014, 04:18:34 PM

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

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!