Stonewalling

One of the main reasons I live in New Hampshire is that it's drippingly, almost sickeningly scenic. This place looks like a postcard, with eye candy everywhere, at least if you love the outdoors. Really. I love that aspect of this state, and it draws in the tourists. The fall season is a big attraction, and then there's the covered bridges -- although in truth, there are only a few of those left. What we do have in abundance still, however, are the famous New England stone walls. They're everywhere, and not just newer ones thrown together by quaint condominiums with names like "Olde Salem Village" or "Ye Commons". Often while driving down a road -- and New Hampshire roads are like canyons of trees, with forests coming right up to the shoulders -- you'll see the sad remnants of a stone wall trail off into the woods. Farming isn't quite as profitable as it used to be, at least not for small New England farmers, and many of the old farms have been abandoned and their lands have reverted to forests. The only hint that humans had once worked this land are the decrepit stone walls wandering seemingly without rhyme or reason through a forest.

I've heard a few different stories about why they built stone walls. Some sound practical, like the fact that any farmer in New Hampshire -- the Granite State, remember -- is going to turn up lots of rocks and boulders while plowing, and well, ya gotta put 'em somewhere. Another version has it that the state (or colony, as it were) actually ordered the walls built in the 18th century so that farmers could easily channel their cattle southwards as they herded them on the north-south roads from New Hampshire to the Boston slaughterhouses. Other versions are a bit more suspect, however, such as the claim I once heard that New Hampshire farmers used to order young farm hands to build the walls to keep them busy -- and away from their daughters. So whether they are the result of soil tilling or hormone control, they certainly add a nice atmosphere to the place, enough to maybe make a guy think he could live in a historic place like this.

BTW, to show you how bad things have to get before a New Hampshire farmer abandons his (or her) land, you might take note of the Tuttle Farm in Dover, NH. It seems that the Tuttles have decided to sell the farm, as they are getting on in age and the kids aren't interested in farming. A sad but not unusual story -- with the possible exception that the Tuttle family has owned this farm for 11 generations, since the 1630s. I wonder which generation put in the first, um, indoor plumbing....?