Thread: Drystone?

Sometimes one of the finer things in life is back-breaking, hard physical work in a craft that requires skill, intuition, and patience.

I enjoy working with unmortared fieldstone. In Kentucky, we call them "rock fences" but generally it's called "drystone masonry." That's rock work masonry, not the cool hats and funny handshakes masonry

Anyhow, on my blog I've been describing the contruction of a drystone retaining wall on my property, and some of you might enjoy reading about this millenia-old craft that is still alive today.

The blog front page is:

Five Smooth Stones

The first article on rockfence building is:

Unless I Build It, It Will Leave

When I was a kid I used to spend summers on my Uncles farm in upstate N.Y and those stone fences are very common as they are throughout New England.

Very common sight in the UK, especially in the North. Organisations like 'The National Trust' and other conservation societies run training courses in drystone walling.
I think you can even book a holiday (vacation) where you spend a week or a fortnight on various conservation projects.

I think work wearied muscles is one of he finest things in life, so long as you're not totally incapacitated in the following days from it. Well done on your rewarding and interesting sideline (?).


Mick

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'