STONES: Scottish Wallers

voodoo · Apr 22, 2004

Last pic.

Unfortunately, the skills are being rapidly lost. Farming here is now becoming a part time occupation. Farmers need "day jobs" to make ends meet. The result, walls are not being maintained and ending up in this condition.

Junkman · Apr 23, 2004

On the road into my home, the sides are lined with stone walls. Most of the walls are falling down after decades of neglect. The property owners around here don't tend to the stone walls very often and a lot of them have been sold to city people that want stones to build their own stone walls. I don't know what the going rate is now, but I have heard that some people would buy a piece of land to sell off the walls and then resell it for what they had originally paid. I have lots of rocks, but no talent to build walls out of them. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

DAP · Apr 23, 2004

Here is the story of the Storm King Center wall, about a half mile of it.

Correction, the wall was constructed in 1997. I wasn't payin attention when I was there I guess. Harv and the rest of you fabricators, would certainly enjoy a visit to this place - lottsa steel, wood and rock - all transformed with a myriad of techniques.

That wall is almost 5ft high and about 3 ft wide. Seems like they use 3 rows of rock for thickness and I know the center row, not visible gets special attention and has special requirements that shore up the exposed sides. Again, there is no mortar of any kind.

EastTexFrank · Apr 23, 2004

( the best stone dyke walls are built in Ireland ) 

Strange, I was always taught that they practiced in Ireland before they came over to Scotland. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

As for farmers needing "day jobs", unfortunately that's the case in a lot of places, including here. Only the larger operations can make a living at it. Unless you can find some niche to exploit I think the days of the small family farmer are pretty much gone. I think its passing, along with the sense of family and the values associated with it, is one of the sadder things associated with "progress". The one bright spot, as seen on this board, are the number of people who return to it later in life as a second career or hobby or those who want to get their families away from the big cities and all the problems that come with them. So maybe it's not all negative. I know when I drive around our basically rural county that there is a building boom. In fact, it's getting downright crowded with people moving out from the city (Dallas is about 100 miles away) and buying 5-20 acre lots. I just hope that that any profit is being made by the land owners and not some developer.

Kevin37 · Apr 24, 2004

I'm sure you've all heard it, but I'll post it anyway.

A local farmer won 20 Million dollars in the lottery.

At the press conference, the first question, of course, was What will you do with 20 million dollars?

Without a beat he replied: "I reckon' I'll just keep farming 'till it's all gone!"

Sad but true

Kevin

AMP762 · Apr 25, 2004

I've often said things to rocks in the field, but I've never had one to answer /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

MarkV · Apr 26, 2004

Dap, good subject! I will not enter the debate between EastTexFrank and Voodoo as to which country built the best stone walls but have had the pleasure to spend several weeks in both countries. It is amazing the stone walls you see when you hit the country roads over there. They go for miles and miles over terrain that can be hard to even walk. I understood that many of the walls were built in a way that would funnel the sheep to the village markets. I can also tell you that many of the walls are way to close to the road for those of us that drive on the wrong side to be comfortable. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

MarkV