Farm layout question

[JGUIS]

I'm wondering what kind of luck anyone has had finding the dump for farms that are surrounded by fields. There are several farms around that have been here since before 1900, most are setting on hills surrounded by fields that have been farmed since their purchase. I'm thinking that they wouldn't use an area near the barn because of livestock, but they probably wouldn't use the 100+ acres of ag. fields either. How far would a farmer transport their trash from their house? Also, I'm checking out property owned by the county infirmary. It was built in 1839, and is still standing. I know that there is a dump full of meds there somewhere, unfortunately, it's a 160 acre farm, so finding it is rough to say the least. I found a partial dump there, but it's full of screw top bottles and jars, and happens to be about 80-100 yards away from the building. If this spot was backfilled to cover the dump, it has over 100 tons of dirt/clay on top of it.

 

[Andyf]

Hi JGUIS,

I have a bit of input here, based on searching for dumps on farms in the UK. That may not seem too relevent, but of course many US farmers were emegrants and may have taken practices with them.

The first point I'd note is that dumps can be VERY close to houses. It seems that they didn't worry too much about having a dump within a few feet of the back door.

Sometimes I find there are 2 dumps or more, an old one close to the house, and later ones further away, perhaps due to it becoming socially less acceptable over time to dump on your doorstep, or a change of owner. I've seen that situation three times I can think of. I've learned now to search again if the bottles don't match the known age of the house.

They often didn't dump outside the farm quad itself where there was livestock. You don't want cattle cutting their mouths on glass...

In the UK, we don't usually find privvies, so privvy digging doesn't really go on here.

Often though there may not be a specific dump. Farms often had a large tip of stones from fields, sillage,and other farm waste. Houshold waste would go on this, and ends up too widely spread to actually dig.

I've also had a situation where there was a dump for ash and a seperate one for bottles/kitchen waste. I don't know why, perhaps they brought waste out by different routes or doors.

Another practice was to dump the ash in garden plots, to improve soil quality for vegetables. Kitchen waste would go somewhere else, but leaving a large area of ash, with lots of tiny glass/pottery fragments, but nowhere to actually dig!!

I work on the basis that every farm HAS a dump, somewhere, but try as a I might, I often can't find them. My hit rate is about one in ten at the moment....

What I also find is bottle condition is often good on farm dumps, ie little sickness. This is due to remote farms burning wood rather than coal which was used more in cities.

Andyf

 

[capsoda]

Also check small ponds and dranage areas like gullies and at the corner of the fields and any wooded areas.

 

[Oldtimer]

I think it was all a matter of who lived there and how wealthy/healthy they were....Small foundations/houses in NE tend to have dumps within 200'....huge farms / huge foundations from the way back days...the ones with money....they tend to be no closer than 500', and often they can be 1/4 mile or more away..And these tend to remain hidden from the lazy diggers...they tend to be deep in the brush and woods, usually over an embankment with water at the bottom..Thats my experience here in NH..Find the obvious farm road to the back 40...

 

[downeastdigger]

HI JGuis
I was out dump hunting today, I've been hunting for old farm dumps for 20 years or so. It's a bit different here in New England, almost every old farm had a gridwork of rock walls forming pastures for sheep and cattle, and defining the property lines as well.

In the early 1800s, a lot of farms were abandoned as people moved out your way, to the midwest to farm, where the soil wasn't full of large rocks. So I spend a lot of my time re-forming the original farm property, using the rock walls, as well trees that are 150 plus years old, that let me know where the edge of a pasture or property line would have been. I can be in the middle of a forest with 50 foot tall trees, and find that it was a corn field or pasture 100 years ago, and be searching for those old "corner" trees, where the corner of the property was. Thats where I hope to find the trash dump. I"m always scanning the trees, noting all the 12" diameter trunk trees, and looking for those few hardwood monster 3 foot wide trunk trees or stumps.

I dont have alot of luck finding dumps on farms with a lot of acreage. I've found a few that were 100 yards or more from the house, but they are newer and were carted there by tractor. I have found of few of these dumps however, where it appears there was a privy, or maybe a smaller very early trash pile near the farm house, and it was dug out, and carted by tractor maybe in the 1940s, to this same trash pile. So I wind up finding pontiled bottles, many broken, but some whole, on the top 6" layer of a dump, then finding screw top bottles below it. And this is in a dump that has not been dug by anyone before me. So that is the only explainatation for it.

It is my opinion that large farms through their trash and rubble and brush trimmings, and piled it in the middle of one of the back fieilds somewhere, and burned it in a bon fire once or twice a year. They could do this without bothering anyone as they had no neighbors nearby. They would have it far from the farm house to keep vermin and bears away. It would often be in a wet ravine, or even in the middle of a field where there is a large boulder or boulders that just couldn't be moved with tractors or horses. The land between these boulders would be useless for anything to a farmer, so it sometimes wound up being a dump, or a burn site. I occasionally find areas of ash along with melted glass bottle shards. That is how I come to this conclusion.

I would imagine you would have some of these tendencies in Ohio. More often than not here in New England, the dumps were not burned and are easily located using the stone walls, and the larger old tree lines. Unfortunately these easily located dumps are usually dug. So now we are finding the harder to find dumps that do exist, as well as the few privies that were separate from the homes, as out here, most of them were inside the houses on the corners, or inside an attached barn, and they weren't deep pits that wound up full of trash. Sometimes they were, but not usually.

There are still dumps out here, land fill dumps from the turn of the century that yield some fun digs, also very early smaller pits that were filled with trash, which can be located with probes. These can be great, but they are hard to find. They are usually within 50 feet from smaller houses.

So good luck with your farm dump hunting. I spend a lot more time looking for new dumps than I do digging. Always looking for that dream dump! Good luck! BRam

 

[JGUIS]

Thanks for the input. I'm hoping something will turn up, I'm sick of people telling me I'm crazy. I'm checking into a few places that were the first settled in my area. New Reading was first by 1805, and by 1815 it and Somerset were busy little towns. I know where the first farm in the county was, along with a few potteries, tanneries, and mills of different sorts, I just need to find the dumps.

 

[walkingstick]

where the soil wasn't full of large rocks.

Minnesota was the last ice age boulder dumping ground.

 

[JGUIS]

So was Ohio, we have lots of Canadian granite here, and a large glacial deposit that holds about 7-9 acres of dirt 50' above the old valley floor.

 

[probe zilla]

I have the same problem here in rural Maryland. We have alot of old farms but I usually only find the dumps maybe one out of fifteen times. In some of my experinces, the farms that were in areas of low elevation dug ditches about 3 to 6 foot deep, usually about 30 to 40 yards from yhe house if you have along enough probe to hit bottom in these ditches you can get lucky and find lots of whole bottles, some of the ditches had water in them when they were originally dug and the bottles just sank to the bottom whole. this might not help just adding my two cents worth good luck

 

[JGUIS]

That makes me wonder about all the springs and swamps. On the old infirmary property, I counted 7 strong running artesian springs. 1 of them supplies a pond, the rest are in different fingers of 2 large valleys behind the infirmary itself. The ground on the floor of both valleys is always saturated and running with water. In one of the valleys, I did some probing and found cinder like pieces about 6" down. About 60' from there, I found a foundation with a small sinkhole about 20' behind it. The sinkhole is about 3-4' in diameter and has sunk about 9-12". I did some probing in the hole and felt some rocks, but didn't have my shovel, as I was just scouting. I guess I'm wondering if it's good thinking that a dump or privy would be on the opposite side of a farm from their water source? Another thing I found out is that round nails were used from about 1880 on, before that were rectangle nails(like current masonry nails), and anything pre 1830-40, used square nails.