The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky Articles — John Shaqi
The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky ArticlesAllen, James Lane
General
The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky, and Other Kentucky Articles
Allen, James Lane
Kentucky -- Description and travel; Kentucky -- Social life and customs
The whole face of the country is taken up by a succession of farms. Each
of these, except the very small ones, presents to the eye the variation
of meadow, field, and woodland pasture, together with the homestead and
the surrounding grounds of orchard, garden, and lawn. The entire
landscape is thus caught in a vast net-work of fences. The Kentuckian
retains his English ancestors' love of enclosures; but the uncertain
tenure of estates beyond a single generation does not encourage him to
make them the most durable. One does, indeed, notice here and there
throughout the country stone-walls of blue limestone, that give an
aspect of substantial repose and comfortable firmness to the scenery.
But the farmer dreads their costliness, even though his own hill-sides
furnish him an abundant quarry. He knows that unless the foundations
are laid like those of a house, the thawing earth will unsettle them,
that water, freezing as it trickles through the crevices, will force the
stones out of their places, and that breaches will be made in them by
boys on a hunt whenever and wherever it shall be necessary to get at a
lurking or sorely pressed hare. It is ludicrously true that the most
terrible destroyer of stone-walls in this country is the small boy
hunting a hare, with an appetite for game that knows no geological
impediment. Therefore one hears of fewer limestone fences of late years,
some being torn down and superseded by plank fences or post-and-rail
fences, or by the newer barbed-wire fence--an economic device that will
probably become as popular in regions where stone and timber were never
to be had as in others, like this, where timber has been ignorantly,
wantonly sacrificed. It is a pleasure to know that one of the most
expensive, and certainly the most hideous, fences ever in vogue here is
falling into disuse. I mean the worm-fence--called worm because it
wriggled over the landscape like a long brown caterpillar, the stakes
being the bristles along its back, and because it now and then ate up a
noble walnut-tree close by, or a kingly oak, or frightened, trembling
ash--a worm that decided the destiny of forests. A pleasure it is, too,
to come occasionally upon an Osage orange hedge-row, which is a green
eternal fence. But you will not find many of these. It is generally too
much to ask of an American, even though he be a Kentuckian, to wait for
a hedge to grow and make him a fence. When he takes a notion to have a
fence, he wants it put up before Saturday night.
[Illustration: TOBACCO PATCH.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account