Look closerLandscape
Stone walls in the Sudbury woods and the farms they once edged
When: All year
Almost every stone wall in a Sudbury woodlot was a field or pasture edge, built from glacial stones farmers cleared in the agrarian century between the Revolution and the Civil War.
Why this time of year
The trees around these walls grew up after the farms emptied out, so on a leaf-off day you can follow property lines that are older than the forest around them.
How to notice it
- Find a wall in the woods and follow it until it meets another wall or makes a corner.
- Notice whether the stones are carefully stacked or just tossed in a line; farmers did both.
- Look at how straight it runs; fields have geometry that forests do not.
- Guess what each side once held, crops, pasture, or farmyard, and say what clue supports your guess.
Try this with kids: Can you follow the wall until it makes a corner?
Safety
- Walk beside walls rather than on top; stacked stones shift underfoot and small animals shelter in the gaps.
Sources
- today.uconn.eduwalls were built by European settlers who cleared glacial stones from fields and pastures out to fencelines, mostly in the agrarian century between the American Revolution and after the Civil War; an estimated 240,000 miles of walls; Thorson is the researcher of record
- forestsociety.orgWilliam Jarvis introduced Merino sheep around 1811, launching a sheep boom; by 1840 an estimated 4 million sheep in New England drove further forest clearing; abandoned farms reverted to forest over the following century
- salisburyhistoricalsociety.orgstone walls replaced wooden fences for enclosures during the sheep boom era as land was cleared for pasture