This standing stone might look like an ordinary piece of granite, but it has a rich history. If you look very closely, you can almost see the two deep holes that have been drilled into it. Though it's now merely a garden ornament, decorating a perennial border, it was once a working fence post. Hinges would have been hammered into the holes.
We found this post up on the hill, deep in the second-growth forest, very close to the remains of what was either a well or a cesspool and beneath the giant senescent maple that must date from pre-Colonial times.
There's also a second megalith, also drilled but not visible in this picture, that now guards a parallel perennial border. Long ago, the two posts flanked an old farm road but the wooden gate that once stood between them had already rotted and disappeared fifty years ago when I first happened upon the posts.
The area where the post stood is surrounded by numerous substantial stone walls that once delineated the boundaries of various fields. Tom Roberts, who farmed the property from 1926 to 1967, told me that he grew apples and potatoes on the hill. There's no need for a gate for potatoes, so the posts must date from a previous era when the land was used to pasture sheep.
We decided to honor the posts by placing them in a more prominent position, so one day we loaded them into the bucket of the Deere tractor and brought them down. We dug a hole about a third the length of the post, chained it to the bucket, and lowered it into place. NGP is getting to be mighty skillful at maneuvering the tractor. The posts are handsome in their new situations. Robins like them too, as places to perch.
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