Just moved

[Digger_O'Dell]

Hello all,
Well, I just completed my move and I am not located at an old farm with 50 acres. I have no idea the age of the place but judging by the old wood barn and the fieldstone and mortar basement walls I assume the house is from at least 1900 if not before. Some of the outbuildings were razed in the recent past, but hope to find quite a few coins and relics here once I get unpacked some and have the time to detect.
I was wondering in anyone has much experience detecting old farms and have ideas where the best places to begin looking might be (other than the obvious). I would assume the fields might yield some stuff after the harvest, but will definitely take a lot of time due to the sheer size. I was told that in the past the farmer grew cabbage, so think there probably had been a lot of hand planting in harvesting in the past where things likely were dripped.
So love to hear back any suggestions and I will post anything good as they come to see daylight once more.

[groundhog53946]

Good to hear from you again. I remember helping on the farm when I was younger that after meals every body found some shade in the lawn to relax for a bit before getting back to harvesting, haying, wood cutting what have you. So if there are any trees around the yard you could look there.

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[Digger_O'Dell]

LOL, pretty much the whole yard is a wooded lot! Lots of really huge old pine trees towering over the raised 2 story house. There is also an area with horseshoe pits and the area around where they built a fire pit with benches and big logs cut into chairs. Very rustic to say the least. I found this morning on the back side of the barn they had build the ramp up to the hay loft from field stone covered with dirt. The sides are still exposed stone and look really old. I have been dying to detect the place since the day I first saw it-looks to me like it could be a silver mine!

Edit: Just found the property records finally. The house is listed as being built in 1915, but this certainly doesn't seem to coincide with the building foundation or the rest of the out buildings. Possibly a new house was built on an old foundation? This was done on the farm I grew up on. Think more research is in order.

Edit: Thinking outside the box I thought to try dating the barn as it's probably the oldest structure on the property. Research has taught me a lot about barn building history. Apparently before around 1860-1880 range barns were not tall as they could only stack hay so high with a pitchfork. After this point is when the tall barns were built. Also, many of the low barns were raised to accommodate what's called a hay track that allowed loose hay to be stacked pretty much as high as the farmer wanted and the roof allowed.
So here's the evidence I have so far: 1) Hand hewn beams 2) very early construction style of the foundation and lower level. 3) A noticeable seam about 20 ft up where the upper portion of wood looks more modern and fitted differently. 4) Gambrel style (dual pitch) roof popular in the late 1800s. 5) Area was settled around 1840.
Conclusion: My guestimate is that the barn was probably first built as a low barn around the mid 1800s and raised in the late 1800s to very early 1900s.

Really hoping to pull out some old coins and relics dating back this far!

[MangoAve]

Fieldstone foundation... Definitely 1800's. Property records are not always the most accurate. Sometimes they use the earliest record available. Sometimes the house was rebuilt on the existing foundation. Don't forget with early wiring there were quite a bit of house fires. Just as well before electricity became wide spread they had house fires from the candles/lanterns and the structure had to be rebuilt. If it was truly 1915 I am certain it would have a poured concrete foundation. One near me has a brick foundation (1820-1880) and is on the 1868 map. The assessor has it 1900. There is an addition behind the house. A house I thought was late 1700s was actually 1600s. There I got a 'I would only have to say no because my nephew does detecting too with his son so not to cause any issue". The back of the house was built 1783, which is what the assessor lists it as.

Let us know what you find there. Just be aware tho, the rebuild of the house would have brought construction equipment on the lawn which might have provoked a fill and flatten and reseed along with some construction trash and the old nails from first structure.

[Digger_O'Dell]

Finally got out for about 45 minutes at the farm house today. I was hoping to have more time, but called in to work as the other night shift guy called in. So I was just sort of wandering around a bit between the front and back of the house and around the well house a bit where there is a remnant of old clothes line hanging from a pole. The front yard appears to have a lot of fill as the dirt is quite loose and full of pea gravel. Didn't find much there other than a couple recent pennies.

Over by the well house and clothes line I got tons of weak irregular hits interspersed with lots of newer clad coins. I found that there is a lot if small rust deposits like iron gone to nothing. My pinpointer kept hitting those instead of the targets I was going for, so this made for slow going trying to recover anything. I know there is probably much more clad here at the least, so have that area marked for a good going over at a later date. But on the back side of the well house I got hits like popcorn-all coming up on my VDI like someone scattered a handful of pennies over a fairly large area. To my suprise they were not pennies, but rather small brass spray nozzles like are used on irrigation systems! There must be several dozen scattered in the area. So another area to clean out later on as there was not time for so much digging.

Lastly I hit up the back yard a bit and found this area had a lot of junk targets. Several pieces of tin, an old foil pie pan, aluminum can shreds, etc. But there was also a spattering of clad coins there too. So overall not a bad haul with $1.25 in clad, including one quarter found on edge about 4 inches down which shows me my machine and I are definitely working well together. Getting closer to the silver with a '67 dime and '73 quarter, so I will get some photos up once I get some better items which I know are there just waiting to be found!