A deadman consisted of a circle of posts containing, at the centre, rocks loaded in to the height of about five feet and held together by iron rims from old buggy wheels. This whole sat atop the ground relying on the weight of the rocks to keep it upright. Fence wire could be attached and stretched taut without pulling the heavy structure over.
Deadmen belong to a bygone day but some still stand where the fence corners were. The posts for the circle are salvaged from an even older time when split cedar rails made fences. The whole side of the farm along the road was fenced with cedar rails until Hurricane Hazel came through and blew them down. The very back field has remnants of the still earlier fence of intertwined pine roots the first settlers used to keep livestock in.
However, the day of the deadmen is long gone and many have simply collapsed where they stood, spilling their stones back to the earth and letting the grass grow up around them. Yet these relics remain a testament to the hard labour and ingenuity of former generations. And I know each of these stones was painstakingly collected and hauled from the plowed fields of deeper soil by my dad.
