Pittston Farm

  I have been working on a 200 year old farm in Pittston and yesterday I spent my lunch break MDing around one of the old barns. Found about ten old plow tines and this great little brass ring, possibly from a door knocker. Also found a heavily tortured wheat penny dating to the teens. It is turning out to be a year of wheat pennies. I guess I need to go deeper.

  Dan, the owner of the property, gave me a great little history of the area. He said there is a schoolhouse foundation at the end of the drive and multiple cellar holes down the road, including one of a carriage wheel shop, which explains the carriage wheel ring I found earlier this week. He even drew me a little map showing how to get there. Now, if I can just find the time...

Combed His Hair With A...

  Wagon wheel. At least that's what I think it is. I found it beside an old school-house foundation I plan to hunt soon. The detector was picking it up from six feet away. It's about four feet in diameter and weighs about 30 pounds--very well constructed. I assume it was some kind of tread-ring around a wagon wheel. It looks like garden-art to me.

Two Wheaties

  Stopped at an old grange hall on the way to work for a few minutes. The place appears to have been built in the 1800's, but a few quick digs and an examination of the foundation made it readily obvious that the place had been renovated in the thirties or forties. In a short amount of time I found two wheat-pennies, a 1942 and a 1930, respectively; which leads me to believe there will be more old coins there somewhere.

The Garden Next Door

  Last week I got permission to hunt my neighbor's rather large garden, which sits in the center of an enormous lawn; and this lawn was once part of the nineteenth-century farm that included both the neighbor's house and my own. Well, the ground finally thawed enough to get a spade in sometime late Sunday afternoon and I spent an hour or so pacing back and forth across last year's furrows while my fiance worked on a paper for school.
  I found mostly the usual unrecognizable rusty pieces of old farm junk and lead bullets (which makes me think it is a good idea to metal detect all gardens to avoid food contamination). However, I was happy to find a small copper buckle, probably from a shoe or boot and another spoon to add to my found spoon collection. I don't know what it is, but I find these spoons everywhere I go. I suspect that nineteenth-century Mainers just carried spoons around with them in their pockets, in case they came across some soup or something in the woods. Anyway, I love the damn spoons. I am fascinated by the shapes they adopt while buried inside the earth.

  Currently, my spoon collection is being used in a large plant pot in our living room, stuck into the potting soil upright to prevent our crazy cat, Howard, from using it as a litter box.

Locked Eternally

 I found this in our yard last Fall. I am posting it now because it sits on a shelf in our home and has, over the Winter, become one of my favorite finds. And because the ground here is still frozen--despite the fact that it is almost April--and I am having a difficult time digging up anything new. I cannot express how ready I am for this cold weather to break...

It's Still Cold

 Here is the thermometer scale referred to in the last post. It is copper and I just noticed the script along the side that says things like "blood heat" next to 99 and "freezing" beside 31. When I dug it up, it was curled up into a little roll and I almost discarded it without looking closer. The experts always say to take all you suspect trash home with you, so it can be cleaned and examined more carefully.

Cogsley Cogs

 This came out of Union Commons, probably part of an old clock. I have recognized in the eastern part of the park an indentation in the earth which appears to be the site of an old foundation. I am certain some old-timer will come along who can tell me what was there. Anyway, I have been finding the more "domestic" items (such as the key, this cog, a thermometer, etc...) near this indentation.

The Old Battle Axe

 I found this in the yard the other day while I was waiting for Laura to put her shoes on. I have four others and I plan on soaking them in used motor oil to remove the rust. A few of them are sharp enough to use as wedges for splitting large stones.

The Stubborn Union

Take these two links
still conjoined
there were probably hundreds of them
pulled apart, broken, crushed, lost
dissolved by time
but these two held fast
through punishing adversity
against the withering forces
that ultimately destroy all things
defying Universal Laws
and sense
for no other reason
than belonging together.

The Buckle

  I had pretty good luck hunting last year, as I spent the summer working on North Haven, a small island off the coast of Maine. The place seemed relatively untouched and I left in the fall with a small box full of trinkets and coins with dates as early as 1775. The most exciting find, however, was a Civil War-era buckle I unearthed from the backside of an old stone wall. I had followed the toppled structure through a field and into a stand of new-growth trees, where my detector started giving off multiple strong signals.
  I excavated a couple of caps still attached to some broken nineteenth century liquor bottles, followed by a silver-plated salt shaker and the sound-board from a harmonica.  I was immediately struck by how close to the surface these items were, as I am every time I hunt on North Haven. You see, a hundred years ago, there wasn't a tree standing on the whole island and the ones there now haven't been there long. Therefore, there has not been a lot of organic waste--such as branches and leaves--to decompose and turn into soil; that coupled with the fact that most of the island's sub-soil consists of ledge just inches below the surface, which prevents small objects from sinking and makes farming an impressive feat.
  A  few moments later I dug what appeared to be a small buckle, about three inches in diameter, with a wreath-like design around it. Wonderful, I thought, an old brass buckle. It was at least five minutes later and ten feet away before I found the other half, emblazoned with the unmistakable Naval symbol of the "fouled anchor", or the rope-encircled anchor. There was still a small strip of wizened leather attached to the end of one side. I put the two together and marveled at what I had just found. I knew it was military, but I had no idea of its age or origin.

  I did some research when I got to a computer and found that the buckle was known as a tongue and wreath buckle and was popular in style during and just after the Civil War. I searched the internet diligently and found many similar buckles, but was ultimately unable to come up with a match. I took it to antique dealers and even a Maritime Museum, but no one could give me any more information. Over the winter, I listed it on ebay and it sold for 500.00 to a man in Barbados who was very happy to find it. He wrote me back later and said he thought it was British.