Turner Farm Project

Just on the mainland for a night during our second week on the beautiful and historic Turner Farm of North Haven, Maine. Our current task involves rebuilding the collapsed stone walls around the farm in a way that combines aestheticism with utilitarianism. We had a couple of false starts as we got a feel for the different types of stone we would have to work with and tried to establish a style that matched the few existing walls, at least in form. Those remaining walls are tall and narrow and comprised mostly of large, sharp, ledge-like stones chinked up at the sides and corners. However, the rocks that we seem to have the most of are more along the lines of round-rock boulders and a plethora of smaller round rocks and field stones. We finally settled this week on a wall that is four to four-and-a-half feet tall, wide at the base and narrow at the top. It enables us to retain the feel of the original walls, while using what we have to work with. The construction is basically a combination of flat-faced round-rock wall building and rough farm wall rock-stacking, finished with a row of upright stones along the top. Here are a couple of pics of the early stages of construction. This weekend I will post some pictures of the more finished product with the upright coping on top.