Harvesting Rocks

We purchased our property, 4 decades ago, because of it’s rolling character, and distant southern-facing views. Our solar home was set into the highest slope in the area.  We built our Solar Home into this big hill.  We refer to our property as “Lodi Heights”. Lodi proper, is a place well known to locals for it’s famous Trading Company, and a gas station/store. That gas station used to have a roadsign that said “Lodi”; That’s how big it was when we moved there.

At the edge of our Red Pine Plantation, grows a group of White Pines.  Bonnie discovered the head of a rock peeking out, next to one of those White Pines. It was about the size of half a piece of paper. She dug around a bit with a shovel, and decided to let me bring my tractor, since it might be to big for her shovel.

I’m always on the lookout for landscape rocks, so I grabbed the Kubota tractor, and attempted to extract this rock. The Kubota was not big enough to “pop” it out, so we (mostly Bonnie) tried to dig it out more. We found the boulder to be large and encased in White Pine roots. 

I have a good buddy, Dave, with a tracked Bobcat. That Bobcat (and Dave), with help from us and others, have retrieved hundreds of rocks from piles around our property. Dave loves to build rock walls from fieldstone. We hired Dave (and his minions) to constuct remarkable retaining fieldstone walls on our propery. These walls added class and eye appeal to our landscaping (especially Bonnie’s amazing gardens).

Dave brought his Bobcat over last week to spread a new load of gravel on our drive. I said; “Dave, can you dig up a rock for me?” There is nothing Dave likes more than digging, moving, and building with fieldstones. Dave gets as excited about digging rocks as I do when I find a bonus fry in the bottom of a McDonalds’ bag. Both Dave and I love rocks. I prefer little ones to make jewelry, and he prefers monster ones for rock walls. 

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Dave took his machine down to dig up that rock, AND COULD NOT BUDGE IT!  NOW WE ARE PISSED OFF! Dave is upset that his trusty Bobcat had failed to fetch that rock, and me because I WANT that rock. His story is that, while I was gone on an errand, that root encrusted boulder. made his Bobcat do headstands; Dave and his grandson dug around that rock even more, and it still would not “pop”. The rock had a skull of White Pine Roots gripping it.

The Next Day

While we like trees, we have a lot, and we really love ROCKS, so it was decided that Dave should take his machine, and “do whatever it takes”, to dig out that rock from under that Big White Pine; even if it meant cutting the tree down!

After some serious sand removal, that big glacier-transported boulder, was finally extracted. We never would have gotten that stone out with hand digging, or with my Kubota. We had no idea how big that granite boulder was!

Root damage was sustained by the White Pine, but it may come back. if it has sustained too much damage, I’ll cut it down and sell it for lumber.

Not only was that large boulder extracted, but 30 other sizable stones were also under that tree.  This indicated that this was origionaly a farm stone pile, containing rocks removed from fields. They couldn’t move the big rock, so just added more smaller rocks to it.

Now, that stone proudly sits in a place of enjoyment, with several of its’ buddies. It has to remain where if is. It’s too big for the Kubota. These rocks present an opportunity for a new flower garden, or a structure for kids to climb on.

The challenging Boulder is Granite with a fine seam of Quartz running around it, like a seatbelt (or like the tree roots that had it secured). Dave has hauled larger Boulders, but this was his most challenging rock ever.

The next step is a good power washing of all those new beauties. Some of the pictures may be out of order, but I think you can figure it out.