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Hauling Rock
Random musings on hauling rock:
I spent part of this past weekend picking up rocks in the fields out at my family’s farms in Miami County’s Elizabeth Twp. as we continue spring planting. In recent years, hauling rock — a rather mindless but relaxing job — has had me thinking. It seems I could convince some of my city-slicker friends to pick up rock by telling them they could get a tan while finding rocks for landscaping, much as Tom Sawyer convinced his friends that they couldn’t pass up a chance to whitewash a fence.
Out on the farm, we pick up rocks the size of a fist or larger to keep them from damaging the farm equipment. We dump them in the corners of fields, and some big piles have built up over many decades. (I have to admit the sight of huge boulders dumped in a ditch is a pretty cool one.) A lot of farmers don’t pick up rocks anymore, especially those who have switched to no-till practices. (We no-till soybeans, but still raise corn the old-fashioned way.) Other farms are farming more acres and simply don’t have the hours for such a time-intensive chore.
The job has gotten a lot more pleasant just in the 32 years I’ve been alive. When I was very young, my cousins and I used to sit on the front bucket of a noisy tractor and fetched the rocks we spotted, with the occasional obligatory throwing of a dirt clod at each other. Today, we use John Deere Gators, bringing out the tractor only for the biggest rocks.
I was struck by a neighbor’s perspective on rocks seven years ago when I wrote an article on how we view rocks. She had seen the stone pile on her old farmstead east of Troy depleted in the five years since her family had moved there.
“To the people who were living here at the time, it represented a great deal of effort,” she said of the stone pile, speaking on condition of anonymity lest she attract more stone snatchers. “To me, a present homeowner, it represents history.”
A local landscaper summed it up well: “Rocks in the past, when we were more of an agricultural society, were looked at as more of a nuisance. Now that we’re more of a suburban society, people look at them as a thing of beauty.”
What’s your take on rocks?
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By Bertha B.
April 29, 2008 8:54 PM | Link to this
This posting reminds me of a story in the book I’m currently reading, “The Seashell on the Mountain,” about the beginnings of (the rather modern) science of geology. Strange to think as it is, before people really knew how rocks were made, there was actually a well-accepted belief that they spontaneously reproduced at nature’s whim, much as animals and plants reproduce. One sure example of this theory’s validity was the observation that every year, farmers clear their fields of rocks and stones, and yet there they appeared again next year! Erosion had not yet been “discovered,” and those re-appearing rocks must have confounded the Renaissance plowmen. Today we know why they keep turning up, but it’s surely still annoying. ;)By Riverdale Ghost
April 30, 2008 10:55 PM | Link to this
Another charming description to fascinate this here city slicker. Thank you!By dw5000
April 30, 2008 11:11 PM | Link to this
You know what, I just put in a request to the universe that I want a good size boulder for my landscaping. I couldn’t believe how much they want for the one I wanted …$500. Wow. Now I am noticing all the huge boulders out in people’s lawn, field or abandon parking lots and wonder if they know they could eBay them for a good price. haha.