History

I love stone walls.  If I was younger, and I often wish I had found this life many years ago, I would be repairing the fallen down walls on my farm.  I often think of the endless backbreaking work it took for human and horse to get these rocks out of the ground so they could graze their animals.  Surely all these wide open fields were covered with forest two hundred years ago.  Some of the walls were knocked down to put fence posts in for barbed wire.  Ouch!  Others just fell down over the years.  The hillside is mostly shale.  Little by little my sheep are improving the fields with their manure.  What a beautiful farm this must have been years ago, when it was being worked with teams of horses, and the founders were braving the harsh winters and trying to keep their animals alive without baled hay.  They were made of some kind of stuff.   Sadly, they lay in the cemetery across the road, which I do not own.  Their resting place is in the same shape as this wall.  We used to try to right the fallen stones and read the names.  Lydia, the founding mother whose spirit inhabits my barn, rests there, along with her husband, Elisha, and many of their children.  They buried many children there.  I like to think they approve of what I am trying to do here.  I sometimes hear of people buying farm land and letting it go back to it's natural state.  Trees and bushes are fine, but I wonder if they realize what hard work it took to make it grassy fields.