From a first perspective, our farmhouse looks homey and content, in its lively golden years as we celebrate its 160th birthday this year. Happily nestled under a thick blanket of snow, our cheery yellow Greek Revival, dubbed Lemon Drop, seems to be the only interesting nearby thing as all the plants in our garden and conifers in the fields are in “wintertime sleep” mode. This morning, however, a sunny walk among deep snow reversed that opinion….

As Denny the Farm-Dog left our side to curiously pursue a deer trail, we decided to follow him. This took us off our usual path, twisting onto a trail that borders the edge of a steep cliff that travels down to our stream. Chris, who happened to be looking in front of him, noticed a Balsam Fir trunk with what looked like a piece of rusty wire deeply embedded in the bark. He called Zach over along with an oblivious Denny, to inspect the piece. They immediately discovered that this find was an old section of barbed wire, embedded in the tree trunk. How fascinating! Over the three years we’ve lived here, we have discovered a few tree stumps and tree trunks, encrusted with the same rusted, two-strand, 4-barbed wire but never this much! This particular case of a mysterious barbed wire appearance resembled our previous findings, and now reinforced our theory that a barbed wire fence had existed there some time ago. Turning to look at the surrounding trees, we came face-to-face with more spiny wires embedded in the trunks of trees. This was an amazing piece of farm history to us, and we wondered why this fence was here, and what purpose it had on the farm. Which family had put this fence here, and which animals were grazing nearby that required its presence?

We hastily retreated to the warmth of Lemon Drop, where we brushed the snow off our boots and decided to research the history of barbed wire and its use on farms. Our eyes were drawn to the laptop screen faster than the brute strength of Tacky Glue in under ten minutes!  Some research informed us of a cool bit of wire history! About 200 patents were issued in the 1800s for various fencing ideas to control livestock as Americans moved West, as trees were sparse. These ideas ranged from nails in wood sheets to different wire strands. But it was Lucien B. Smith in 1867 who patented what would become modern day barbed wire. Today there are over two thousand types of barbed wire with 800 of them patented – who knew! Images of antique barbed wire that we found on the internet indicate that the barbed wire we found near our stream looks just like N. G. Ross, 4-point barbed wire that was patented in June of 1879. We found another very different-looking piece of barbed wire wrapped in a loop on a wooden fence near our house. This one looks just like Allis Buckthorn Ribbon Barbed Wire #3 from 1881. How cool! With a not-so-quick look at our inch-thick deed for our farmhouse, we think that the owner starting in 1876 was named Rufus A. Wheelock! So many questions… who was the Wheelock family; how did they farm here? What kind of impact did they have on their environment, and the environment on them? Our deed tells us they were foreclosed upon in 1888, but why? We’re wired to find out more 😊