I am sure that everyone who has grown up on a farm knows what the phrase “picking rocks” means which is removing rocks from a field so they can’t damage the farming equipment. However the way picking rocks is done has evolved over the years so it is not as much of a manual process as it once was.
If you are of the older age like myself, picking rocks was accomplished by picking up a rock with your hands and then placing that rock in a container such as a trailer or a loader tractor bucket. It did not require any special skills, training, or even thought to do so. In fact probably the best qualifications for picking rocks was to have a strong back and a weak mind.
The first field work a farmer did in the spring was to pick rocks. As soon as the frost was gone from the ground enough so that the rocks were loose from the ground, my Dad would begin picking rocks. He would pick rocks in the morning, then in the afternoon when it was warmer he would do other work to get ready for springs work. And we picked rocks by hand.
Even though we picked all the rocks the year before, every spring brought a whole new batch of rocks. Dad said our land was very good at growing rocks, too bad there isn’t a market for them. Little did we know that 40 years later there would be a market for them! More on this later.
The other day on a Fargo radio station I heard an ad from a business and it said that with drone technology and GPS, they could map out where the rocks are on your field so you could drive right to them to pick them. I laughed out loud! All you had to do at our farm was look at the field and you could see the rocks. It didn’t take a special talent to find rocks on our fields!
Rock picking was a family affair. Dad spent the most time picking rocks but when us kids were at school Mom would help him if she could find someone to watch the little kids. When we got home from school we would pick rocks until suppertime. On Saturdays we would all be out in the field picking rocks. But we NEVER picked rocks on Sunday.
We used a 4 wheeled trailer to haul the rocks in that had once been used as a hayrack trailer. The hayrack had been removed and there were boards about 12 inches high on the sides to keep the rocks in. We pulled the trailer with a wide front A John Deere tractor that had a hand clutch. We all learned to drive tractor by driving that tractor in the field picking rocks. Once you were big enough to operate the hand clutch you drove the tractor from one group of rocks to another while the rest of us picked the rocks. It actually made rock picking easier if you had a tractor driver so you wouldn’t have to get on and off the tractor all the time to drive ahead. We would pick all the rocks that were about the size of my Dad’s fist and larger. We would place the rocks in the trailer and when it was full it was driven up to a rock pile and we would throw the rocks onto the pile so we got to handle each rock twice. Lucky us! It was in the 1960’s that we got a Dual loader for the A John Deere tractor, quite a labor saver!
Although picking rocks didn’t require a lot of skill, training, or thought, you did develop special ways of making the job more efficient such as by carrying as many rocks at a time as you could thereby saving walking steps. Also by working with your siblings you found ways to make the job a little more enjoyable by making a game out of it. Such as seeing who could carry the most rocks or we would have races or when we’d unload the rocks from the trailer and throw them into the rock pile we would aim for certain spots. Kids are good at making a game out of work, sometimes to the chagrin of the adults.
Finding rocks in a field was never a problem, they were very abundant. Most of the rocks were on higher ground and on some hills they were so thick we would shut the tractor off until we got the trailer loaded, then go unload it and come right back to the same spot!
On Saturdays when Dad and us older kids were picking rocks, Mom would come out in the afternoon to bring us lunch (mid-afternoon snack) and she would bring the younger kids with. They would “help” us pick rocks for a while until they got bored. Then we would shut the tractor off and all sit down and have lunch. It was a family picnic.
The best part about field work was Mom’s lunches. She would bring sandwiches, my favorite was made with rullepolse or head cheese, and then some sweet treats. Us kids would have the Watkins version of Kool-Aid and sometimes just a little coffee to warm us up. Once our lunch was over, Mom and the little kids would go home and the rest of us would keep picking until it was time to go home and do chores.
When there were rocks that were too big to lift onto the trailer we would use a stone boat which was pulled by a narrow front A John Deere tractor. We would bring the stone boat next to the rock and roll it onto the stone boat. If the rock was really large we would use an iron bar to lift and skid it onto the stone boat. This bar was about 5 feet long, round and maybe an inch or so in diameter with a point at one end. Anytime you needed to move something heavy we used this bar to pry and lift with. The bar has been in our family for generations and it has always been assumed that my Grandpa brought it with him from Norway. I have this bar now and I used to use it for moving large round hay bales. But that was back when I was young and strong!
Dad would sometimes hire the Bergland boys to help him pick rocks. The Bergland boys weren’t really boys, they were 2 young men who lived on a farm north of Heimdal with their parents. Their names were Ardell and Glenn and they were extremely hard workers. Glenn when he picked rocks would run with them. He’d run over to pick one up then run with it to the trailer. Dad would remind him that he was being paid by the hour so there was no need to rush. But he still didn’t slow down. Glenn and Ardell were quiet guys and smiled a lot when you talked to them. I think the real reason the Bergland boys liked to work at our place was because of my Mom’s cooking. They just loved her food! They were kind of on the thin side but they could put away a lot of my Mom’s food. She always made sure she had plenty for them to eat and would also send sweet treats home with them.
The first job I ever had was working for my uncle Norris picking rocks. He paid me $1.00 per hour which I thought was great! As a bonus I got to eat my aunt Borghild’s great cooking!
Norris had a loader on his tractor with a large bucket on it so it took a lot of rocks to fill it up but it was much easier to unload than our trailer. I used to help other farmers pick rocks too as have my 3 brothers. I’ve picked so many rocks that I can consider myself an expert at it so I guess I’m lucky that I had the strong back and weak mind qualifications.
After I got out of the Army I worked for a farmer by Kensal one summer. He had a rock picker with tines on it and you would scoop the rocks up and dump them on a bucket on the back of the rock picker. To unload you would back the rock picker up to the rock pile and you could dump the bucket. The tractor I used was a little Fordson, I think the model was called an 8N. It was actually fun picking rocks! But there wasn’t near as many rocks as our farm had.
In the 1990’s as Devils Lake was rising with water, they would have to raise the roads and they used rocks as rip rap on the sides of the road to keep them from eroding. Eventually they used up all the rocks close to Devils Lake so the road contractors started going around all over the country and buying up old rock piles from farmers. When they approached my Dad about selling his rock piles he was just flabbergasted! Finally there was a market for his rocks!
I don’t know how much they paid him for the rocks but he said later he would have given them away just to get rid of them!
I never minded rock picking, in fact it could be therapeutic as it gave you time to think of other things. After I left home and was on my own, I would still come back home occasionally and help Dad pick rocks. My Dad picked rocks by hand all his life, he never did get a mechanical rock picker. I think he too enjoyed the therapy of rock picking. I bet you never realized that picking rocks was actually therapeutic for you!
George Washington once said “Agriculture is the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man.” And I agree!
The source for this story is my memories. Writing down your memories is good for your heart. Thank you for letting me share mine with you.
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