Pickin’ Up Rocks & Treasures

Its the time of year for picking up rocks where needed…..after fields are tilled and before row crops are planted.

My married daughter (from Des Moines area) was home over the weekend. Was she here because she missed seeing Pa and Ma? No……she needed rocks for a landscaping project. She couldn’t have chosen a better time because Husband’s work plans for the weekend included picking up rocks.

Residing permanently in the middle of one of our fields is this massive boulder. We believe large chunks of it were blasted away years ago to provide foundation stones for the original buildings on this farm. Several of those large blocks now reside in the landscaping near our house. I like to imagine that ancient people may have sat on this boulder and surveyed the adjacent low-lying area.

We believe this hole in the boulder was drilled for the placement of dynamite:

Daughter chose rocks to take home from the piles surrounding the large boulder. Then she went to the other end of the field and helped her dad pick up rocks in the areas of ground that had been disturbed last fall during the excavating done to dig in new strings of drainage tile.

Here’s some of Daughter’s choices…..they will look better once they’re cleaned with the power washer:

I decided to start working on the closest tile ditch. Much to my surprise, the first rocks I found were the two large flat ones shown in the next photo, each about two feet long and one foot wide. Honestly, I have never found rocks this shape before, and more odd yet was the fact that there were TWO of them right next to each other! As if God had stowed away a spare pair of tablets for The Ten Commandments, right here in the soil of our farm in Iowa! Sasquatch was curious about them, too, and proceeded to plop right down in the shade of the upright stone which promptly toppled over on her!

The less visible stone was embedded too tightly for me to dig it out. Husband had to do it.

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Since childhood, I’ve been involved in more annual rock-picking expeditions than I care to remember. When I was growing up, our “back forty---and it literally was a 40-acre field located at the back of the farm---produced a new crop of rocks every spring. We kids would glumly take our spot on the flat-bed trailer for the bone-jarring ride to the field. The thoughts going through my head then always included, “Maybe I will get lucky and find an arrowhead this time”…….but that never happened. Sigh. That hopeful wish still lives inside of me, however……and GUESS WHAT!! I may have found a Native American artifact on Saturday! Its not a projectile point, but I believe it could be a cutting tool or scraper. I spotted it not far from where the two flat rocks were. Its edges are VERY sharp (I could use it as a jack knife, for cutting baling twine, etc.) and one side appears to have been deliberately chipped.

We left piles of interesting rocks on the edge of the field to pick up later.

Eventually, the colorful rocks in the creek bed caught my attention, too, but I decided to come back another time to retrieve some of those…..if I can find a pair of boots that don’t have holes in them!

The trunk of Daughter’s car was well-weighted down by the time she left.

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Here’s two round stones I found a few years ago……down by the creek. They could be tools from the past (or prehistoric golf balls).

Here’s a link to a video about a cache of ancient tools that were dug up in Boulder, Colorado, during a landscaping project.

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[Related coincidence: On Sunday, the day after we picked up these rocks, our pastor's sermon text was Acts 4:11: This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.]

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Have a rockin’ good day yourself!

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