The Stuff We Find in the Dirt

To be fair, it's mostly my favorite skipper who is finding things... because he is looking.

I am meanwhile mostly playing with my electronic screen of paper dolls. Or staring moodily into the near distance while thinking about what misery my little paper people are going to endure next.

But Jeff? Less moody and more duty.  While using a manual post-hole digger last week, himself was contemplatively lifting and thunking the tool when he heard a non-dirt noise.  It sounded a bit too musical to be a rock, though we are amply supplied with rocks at the Would-Be Farm. He gingerly applied fingers and Little Jack Hornered a beefy chunk of glass from the clay.

When I saw it at first, I thought it might be antique automotive glass, but thank you Google, it turns out to be a honking piece of an orange drink jug from 1927-1937.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1927-35-nesbitts-orange-soda-jug-3880547348

I wonder how long it's been rusticating in this former cow pasture? Nearly 100 years? Did it slide down from the midden pile behind the old farmhouse?

the old farmhouse, slowly bowing to gravity

 The midden pile.  Or, if you like, call it a trash heap, but I like the archeological flavor of "midden."  

And archeologically/anthropologically speaking, nearly every farm from before the middle of the 20th C usually had its very own spot for trash. Just like the Mesopotamians, chucking used plates and broken furniture over the edge of a rise. Out of sight, out of mind. 

A few years ago, I uncovered a treasure-trove of unbroken glass bottles that had somehow survived first the pitch out of the old farmhouse back door, second the minefield of granite chunks and previously pitched items, and third the 20, 30, 40 winters between then and now.  ​

But Jeff has found a hand plough, wonderful old oil can/watering cans, stout tin chicken feeders—lovely rusty bits of history that we have festooned about the cabin.  

A dabba-do car...

My sister even found a grindstone. Which looks an awful lot like one of Fred Flintstone's car's wheels.

Here's a older blog about other archeological finds on the Farm
http://www.amysmithlinton.com/blog/would-be-farm-rural-archeology