Building with Native Stone

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The true limiting factors in wall construction are your own time and patience, your skill and confidence, the nature of the structure you are building, and—one more thing—whatever the local building code has to say about all that. Some places, the zoning mavens will be on you if you try to build a foot-high stone fence along your own garden path. If that happens to you, I'd suggest getting a permit to build a privacy screen; then do your work behind that. (Take the screen down after the next election, and no one will give a hoot.)

If there's enough rock in the neighborhood to erect a building, earlier generations will most likely have built with it. In that case, use the "grandfather clause" in your local zoning ordinance and building code that exempts old structures from new regs and simply rebuild on an existing building site or foundation. I've re-piled some dandy old stone buildings into shapes and sizes that the original architect couldn't have imagined . . . and I'm now halfway through building a foundation for a satellite dish antenna (!) onto the cellar hole of an eighteenth century root cellar on my place, no permit applied for or needed. Next year, my ten-year-old daughter Martha and I are planning to begin work on an old-style post-and-beam, mortise-and-tenon, pegged-and-slated barn on another "ancient" stone foundation: one I hadn't finished laying before first snow last fall. (Carved the date, 1787, on the cornerstone myself!)

Preparations for Building

W e come at last to hands-on construction and to the one elemental truth of stone building. Adam Smith and Karl Marx would cringe in unison at the suggestion, but the main ingredient in a stone wall is neither the rock nor your own hard work. It's gravity. Arrange your stones in such a way that gravity keeps pulling straight down on them, and the wall will be standing long after you and I no longer can.

First, you'll need a proper foundation. The more permanent you want your wall, the more of it you must bury forever underground. The base of any wall expected to last a few hundred years must rest on bedrock if possible, otherwise on solid subsoil. So get yourself a cutting spade to slice out sod and a long-handled shovel to dig a trench. You will find that any ground cover cuts best in early spring before its root systems grab hold; in any season, it cuts easier when wet. Get out the sod and topsoil, and haul it to the compost pile. Then remove any loose rocks and cut out all roots. You may want to remove nearby trees as well. If they're left Standing, their roots will—in time—grow back and heave any wall made, so long as there is soil on the other side for the roots to grow into. (Roots don't much bother walls around cellar holes—there's nothing beyond to grow into.)

If you live in the Snow Belt and want the wall to be a permanent monument to the time and labor you put into it, you should dig the foundation to below frost line. If you plan your walls as part of a building, particularly one that will house people or livestock, you must dig the foundation trench that deep. Simply put, winter temperatures freeze soil moisture, which expands and pushes everything above it up (such as those boulders that grow in my garden each winter). Then when soil warms in spring, the water thaws and shrinks, and the wet earth sags away from solid objects. A dry stone fence—which has more flex than one secured with mortar—absorbs the up-and-down and interior motion such alternate freeze/thaw imparts each season. Even one laid without much foundation will retain its integrity for years with only an annual patrol to replace fallen top stones. On the other hand, a foundationless cemented wall will crack open the second winter. You don't want either cracks or falls with a house, barn, or shed . . . so put any building on a deep foundation.

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