A pity that New England’s original farm families couldn’t cash in on the hard harvests of a century or three ago.
We’re talking fieldstone here – rocks worked to the surface by horse-drawn plows. They had to be carted off the fields before any seed could be sown.
In rustic New England as well as in rural areas elsewhere, the muscle-straining discards were turned into freestanding fences, dry stacked retaining walls, “pavers,” “steppers” or facades for fireplaces and chimneys.
Landscapers and developers have discovered these relics of agricultural history. They’re paying big bucks for entire fences, which they dismantle stone by stone for restacking hundreds of miles away in exurban yards.
“They’re taking out 200-year-old (stone) fences with dump trucks,” said Earl Mickel, of Beach Lake, Pa. “They take them back to their yards where they sort them, reload them, and then haul them down to New Jersey, New York City or Philadelphia.”
Mickel said he still has a mile or more of weathered wall running through his fields and pastures but much of that pioneer history is disappearing fast.
“Fieldstone prices have gone up,” said Abigail Kearns, who with her husband, Brian, owns and operates A&B Kearns Trucking and Stone Center in Culpeper, Va.
“Rock hunters have to go farther into the woods now because all the fields that delivered up the rocks have been cleared,” she said. “They’re (farmers) not working the ground that much anymore.”
Stone is sold by the piece, by the pound, in five-gallon buckets or by the tractor-trailer load. Factor in the hauling, of course.
There’s nothing wrong with collecting rocks from your property, from riverbeds or from roadsides provided you’re not breaking any laws. But that kind of rock often is the wrong size or shape for whatever project you have in mind, or they simply don’t appear natural.
Not all of the rocks finding favor these days come from stone yards or farm fields. Some are quarried, like soapstone, which increasingly is making its way into water garden setups.
Soapstone has many unique characteristics, said Bill Russell, chief operating officer for the Alberene Soapstone Co. in Schuyler, Va.
“It’s heat-resistant, chemically resistant to acids and alkalis, electrically nonconductive, resistant to surface wear and easily fabricated,” Russell said. “It’s reported that Thomas Edison called Alberene soapstone ‘nature’s perfect engineering material.’”
Soapstone adds character to water gardens and winters well in the cold, meaning it doesn’t fracture with frequent temperature swings. Soapstone also sheds micro-organisms, unlike more porous granite or sandstone, he said.
Shopping for rocks may seem a bit much, but only certain kinds can be used in historical restorations or when trying to match specific landscaping themes.
“We’ve had people come in saying ‘I can’t believe I’m buying rock,’” Kearns said.
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