Between Our Steps: Fence Rows
Burying fence rows clears land for larger equipment — but the stone returns with each freeze and thaw. Cathy Hird weighs the tradeoff between acreage and ecosystem.
COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION
In the early seventies, my husband bought our farm from the youngest son of the people who settled the land. Given that the owners were in their nineties, they didn’t clean the place out. So there were preserves in the basement, and rotting leather horse harnesses under the buckets of bolts my husband bought for a buck at auctions.
(There would surely be something useful in that bucket… but that’s a bit off track.)
Our land was dotted with granite and limestone rocks. Any time we worked up a field, stones would rise to the surface and had to be removed. Stones the size of a head or larger would get pulled up by the plow and cultivator, and failing to move them off the field or the mower and combine would be trouble.
Since the land had been worked since the mid 1860s, each field was surrounded by rows of rocks about half a metre high and a metre wide.
All kinds of things grew in our fence rows — the oldest maple on the property, raspberries and grapevines, apple trees. Squirrels, mice, snakes, and rabbits made their homes there. Probably a skunk or two, as well. Grain fields, although monocultures themselves, were surrounded by complex ecosystems.
When we sold the farm in 2018 (a necessary action, as I was not keeping up with the maintenance of the place) the new owners wanted to bring in larger equipment. They wanted freer access. They did not touch the swamp at the front of the property or the hard wood forest at the back, but they cut down every tree in the fence rows and buried all that stone.
I’ve seen a drone picture of the place, and the lane and every fence row are gone. They left one tree, and I could not tell if it was the old swamp oak or the healthy elm tree. I suspect that there was some regulation to protect it.
I was reminded of this recently as I drove by a farm where the fence rows had been removed. At the edge of the property was a large pile of rock.
Perhaps the farmers who’ve buried fence rows use no-till techniques so that they don’t pull up more rocks. These machines cut a slit in the ground, drop the seed, and cover it all in one pass.
We had started to use an offset disc instead of a plow and cultivator for the same reason; large discs push the soil aside but don’t dig in very far. There’s a warning, though, that these techniques can create a hard layer just a few inches down.
Because we included hay in our rotation, alfalfa with its deep tap root would prevent that problem. If a farmer was just planting crops, fertilizer and other nutrients would remain near the surface, meaning plant roots could not access them.
We had sheep on the farm, so hay was a necessary part of our rotation, hence the alfalfa. But there are alternatives. In fields of winter wheat, red clover is also sown. Clover puts nitrogen into the soil and has a deep tap root that helps the vertical migration of moisture and nutrients. And the plants get worked into the soil in the fall.
But back to those buried fence rows. If a farmer uses traditional preparation strategies, eventually their plow and cultivator would start to pull up the buried rocks. It might take years, but the freeze thaw cycle of Ontario winters means that rocks get pushed upward. No matter how deep the trench was where the fence row was buried, I suspect that eventually plow and cultivator would start to pull up rocks — which is what I assume has started to happen on the farm where I saw the rock pile.
The other issue is the trees. A few would be sold for lumber, but smaller ones and all the branches would be piled and burned. The carbon output of those fires would be significant. I have seen farms where the removed trees were left piled on marginal land, perhaps waiting for a season when it is safe to burn them.
Without fence rows, wind becomes a hazard especially in winter. I’ve seen farms that will leave a row of corn stocks to act as a windbreak. I’ve also driven in places where there is nothing in sight to slow down blowing snow.
It’s true that we are losing farmland to development, and there are acres of farmable land taken up by fence rows. The best way to address that feels unclear to me, but I’m almost certain it’s not burying all that rich ecosystem under only to have it come up again later.
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