For folks not from New England: it's very normal to walk through inhabited the woods in New England and come upon a seemingly totally random stone wall in the m

For folks not from New England: it's very normal to walk through inhabited the woods in New England and come upon a seemingly totally random stone wall in the middle of nowhere. Much of New England is 2nd(?) growth forest -- the original forests were chopped down to make space for farmland. The soil is incredibly rocky, and so farmers would go through there fields and chuck the rocks to the side, making the walls. Eventually people realized that New England's rocky soil was not very good for farming/local farming became less important as food was able to be transported longer distances, and much of the farm land was abandoned and eventually reforested -- with the only the rock walls remaining (or at least that's what I was taught growing up there).