Would-Be Farm: Rural Archeology

Once upon a time, the Would-Be Farm was a young dairy operation.

​In its prime –– somewhere between the middle of the 1800's and the middle of the 1900's –– the acreage had a darling little farmhouse, a couple of barns, fresh fenceposts, livestock, plowed fields, newly planted orchards of apple trees.

Back in those days, rural Jefferson County had no public sanitary service:  no town dump, no  curbside pick-up, no recycling centers.

​This was also (mostly) before plastic, so the sheer volume of garbage produced by a family was a fraction of what it is today.

But still, things did break beyond fixing, and generations of folks who lived at the Would-Be farm burned what trash they could. Anything else, they chucked over the edge of the hill in the back yard. 

I admire farms that keep things neat and trim. It's a rarity.

​Even more than other people, farmers tend to hold onto equipment that they've stopped using. Things pile up.  Sometimes they leave it right  where it stopped and after a few seasons, the metal begins to melt into the scenery.  
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Between midden heaps and melting metal, the Would-Be Farm is giving us a rich archeological site to mine.

The barn has been a collapsed wreck for thirty years or more. Locals who come visit don't even remember even when it went. It's a little mystery. 

This spring, we hired a guy with a very large excavator to clear out the old foundation and haul the detritus away.

1. First, because Mr. Linton kept wanting to toss a match and some accelerant into the pile of rotten wood and rank weeds
2. Second, because we thought we might make use of a limned space already carved out of the side of the hill.  
3. And third, because, well –– squalor. 

The old barn foundation run wild.

The old foundation area was chock-full of ancient roofing material, twisted sheets of metal, honeysuckle trees, tumbled rocks, pipes, and miscellany.

Cool miscellany:

Jeff rescued a turn-of-the-century hand plough out of the wreckage for me.

My sister found a lovely old grindstone.

​I hauled the enormous lid of an old grain container up the hill to make a sort of hob for the fire-pit. Unsuccessful. Jeff slid it back into the pile.

The man with the excavator (and dump trucks!) showed up while we were racing sailboats in Massachusetts. By the time we arrived back on the farm, only an invoice, some dents in the turf, and a void remained.  

Knowing how brambles quickly re-colonize an area, we got to work clearing the rocks* that had tumbled outward from the collapsed western and southern sides of the old foundation. Decades of fallen leaves helped the old timbers and cow manure compost itself into some good-looking soil. We took the opportunity to carve out more garden space.

(*Rock-picking. One of the harder jobs on a farm. Oddly, it did not seem incongruous for me to find myself, decades and degrees later, once again picking rocks from the clay soil of the North Country.) 

My friend Len has a metal detector that he uses to great effect. He often sends snapshots of his latest hauls: delicate, old-fashioned ladies' rings, coins, lead weights he's saving for Mr. Linton.

My metal detector is less refined:  I use a big magnet on a length of twine.  

​There's a decided "clink" when a rusty nail jumps onto the magnet. And then there's the odd pull when the metal is too big to heave itself from its bed.

I can't resist saving these things.

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The metal chunks range from the obvious –– hinges and horseshoes –– to the arcane.  

Nails were evidently cheap, and our guys never used one nail when three were possible. 

​Astonishing amounts of leather survive, the linseed oil preserving the bits of harness and halters even after half a century or more. 

So much peculiar loot!  We could open our own Agricultural museum –– or stock a display case or two at least. Until then, we have a level spot to park the tractor, a stretch of reclaimed field, and a new couple of gardens.

I am thinking horseradish and rhubarb, plus a protected winter bed for daffodils and iris.  Ahhhh.

The old foundation mostly tamed.