Forrest Hartley: Monuments of the Ice Age

Summer can be a difficult time for new gardeners due to rising temperatures. Here are some easy tips for you to try this year.

Every year around this time I am well on my way with the heaviest harvest.

All those stones, cobbles and near boulders that seem to appear over the winter to threaten my plows, tiller, harrows and straight rows.

I got a stone grapple for the tractor early this spring as part of my campaign to save my back. It has been a help both in speeding up the clearing of the garden and, for the most part, keeping me away from shovels and crowbars.

It has also been an inspiration in my longing to remove the seemingly immovable subterranean stones that, year after year, I have had to work around and avoid or, forgetting their location, break bolts and plow points on.

While pounding a T-post into the edge of a garden the other day, I came across one such object.

I didn't know what it was at first, but when I went at it with two tons of tractor and a husky rock grapple, it would not budge.

I got out the shovel and started clearing around the front of this massive stone. I got out the crowbar to pry away the baby cobbles that seemed to be the big one's companions.

I was trying to find the bottom of this thing. When I found a bit of an edge, I pushed the tractor up against that, and attempted with the power of hydraulics and sheer forward force to lift or budge it.

Nothing. I had come across one of those immovable objects you hear about in logic classes.

So, I did the logical thing. I moved the fence post over several feet and pounded it in there. After that I went into the house for a pain reliever.

The change ruined my plan for perfect eight foot spaces between posts in a perfectly straight and plumb line. Probably nobody but me will notice.

That is, except for that goat who decides to push against just that spot to see if she can get under it, over it or through.

Goats are like that. Chickens will work to find a path under, perhaps following a first incursion by Chompy the groundhog, a second by Bunny the bunny, and a third, perhaps by one of the deer people.

But I don't have to worry about that now. I just have to be ready to put plants in the ground a day or three into June, and have barrier enough — including additional electric fencing — to convince the various inhabitants of planet Lynwood that they at least have to think twice about going into the gardens.

None of them are deterred by the tons of stone removed from field, lawn and garden that make up the walls around here.

Those stones that managed to be pulled from the ground over the centuries are piled along the property lines and provide a magnet, playground and housing for all the critters.

If I let them, the goats would be galloping along the tops of those walls all day long in what I call "a royal rumpus."

Royal rumpuses lead to mischief and glee, by the way. Like running out back and playing king of the mountain on one of those large erratic boulders we didn't have to dig up, but still will never be able to move.

The erratics also force us to work and build around them, just like we must do with their underground cousins.

We will be long gone before any of them give up their places.

Hartley

Forrest Hartley lives in the Lynwood section of Hadley. Leave a message at [email protected].

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Summer can be a difficult time for new gardeners due to rising temperatures. Here are some easy tips for you to try this year.

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