The walls tell stories

Stone walls continue to find use on working farms, even though most of Vermont's modern farmers choose electric fencing over the traditional stone rows once used to confine livestock. At the Family Cow Farmstand in Hinesburg, farmer Lindsay Harris raves about the little corral that MacMartin built for calves at her raw-milk dairy. It's sturdy enough that the wall has withstood the antics of a few weighty heifers, Harris says. She's glad that, in addition to being beautiful, the traditional livestock fence allows visitors to her farm particularly children to approach the curious calves safely."The kids can kind of belly right up to the fence, but still have a foot and a half of big rocks between them [and the calves]," Harris says. They don't run the risk of getting zapped by a traditional electric fence or kicked through a less sturdy enclosure.However useful stone walls may be, there's no denying that a huge part of their appeal lies in the aesthetics and other intangible factors. Ask stone-wall aficionados to explain that appeal and they pause — it's a hard quality to sum up. "To me, it's mostly mystery. The walls tell stories," says Flynn. "Somebody spent the time to do it, and each rock was handled by a person at some point. Who was that person, and why did they do it?"MacMartin will be one of those mystery builders someday. If all goes according to plan, his stone walls will long outlive him.Piecing together the stone wall in Charlotte, a project that will take three to four days, MacMartin muses about the meditative quality of the work. There's precision in it, he says, but also a sense that every rule was made to be broken occasionally. And, unlike man-made materials, stones have a way of doing as they please. On some days, the stone just "isn't talking to you."But mostly it's satisfying, if repetitive, labor — with a mentally stimulating component."It's a little like Tetris, or chess," MacMartin says, testing various pieces on the wall before reaching for new stones. "To know where you're going is helpful."