Growing up in Maine and having moved a number of times, there seems to have been a fondness - at least at one point in time - for trash-dumping in the woods.
Some of these items make sense, old fencing still attached to rotted posts, and old beer bottles leftover from day drinking while running said fencing. Others though are just piles of trash, left from a bygone era when people didn't really think about these things, and dumping trash on your own property was just a thing people did.
Whether it makes sense or not, these finds can be dangerous for you and your animals. Catching yourself on barbed wire is a nasty surprise on the best of days, and tripping over a mound of it buried in the woods is extremely dangerous. An animal that gets a leg caught up in a mass of it can panic and mutilate or kill themselves. Removing it is a slow, careful process requiring gloves and an up-to-date tetanus shot.
That isn't to say there aren't some interesting finds out there under the leaves! This was probably one of the stranger ones I've seen - a cast iron skillet apparently with a large caliber bullet hole through it.
Apparently someone got frustrated with trying to figure out the care directions!
My favorite find was definitely from our last fence run though. We found - a piece at a time - the metal frame to a pony cart. Most of the wood was gone except for the spokes to one wheel. The cart was apparently designed with two wheel sizes, the smaller with a dimension of about 39.5 and the larger about 43". The hubs and axles were intact.
We are still hoping to find out more details about the time period it may have been made, but in the meantime it's been fun to dig up.
Be careful with your own finds though, sharp edges still exist!
Comments