In the edges of these woods, you may deposit the surplus stones of the adjacent cultivated fields, in full assurance that moth and rust will not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal, but that you and your sons and grandsons will find them there whenever they shall be needed, as well as those you found there when you came into possession of the farm.
I am further confident that we shall build more and more with rough, unshapen stone, as we grow older and wiser. In our harsh, capricious climate, walls of stone-concrete afford the cheapest and best protection alike against heat and frost, for our animals certainly, and, I think, also for ourselves. Let the farmer begin his barn by making of stone, laid in thin mortar, a substantial basement story; let into a hillside, for his manure and his root-cellar; let him build upon this a second story of like materials for the stalls of his cattle; and now he may add a third story and roof of wood for his bay and grain, if he sees fit. His son or grandson will, probably, take this off, and replace it with concrete walls and a slate roof; or this may be postponed until the original wooden structure has rotted off; but I feel sure that, ultimately, the dwellings as well as barns of thrifty farmers, in stony districts, will mainly be built of rough stone, thrown into a box and firmly cemented by a thin mortar composed of much sand and little lime; and that thus at least ten thousand tuns of stone to each farm will be disposed of. It may be somewhat later still before our barn-yards, fowl inclosures, gardens, pig-pens, etc., will be shut in by cemented walls; but the other sort affords such ample and perpetual lurking places for rats, minks, weasels, and all manner of destructive vermin, that they are certain to go out of fashion before the close of the next century.
As to blasting out Stone, too large or too firmly fixed to be otherwise handled, I would solve the problem by asking, "Do you mean to keep this lot in cultivation?" If you do, clear it of stone from the surface upward, and for at least two feet downward, though they be as large as haycocks, and as fixed as the everlasting hills. Clear your field of every stone bigger than a goose egg, that the Plow or the Mower may strike in doing its work, or give it up to timber, plant it thoroughly, and leave its stones unmolested until you or your descendants shall have a paying use for them.