Mary C. Beaudry and Histarch

Mary

What you just described is known to many area farmers, including 
non-German speaking ones, as a "kitsch pile."  It is a place to keep 
(throw) metal scraps and machinery parts that may be needed later to 
repair something.  They still exist in suburbia as boxes of junk and 
lumber piles in basement or garage shops.  Remember that when you 
call something in your house "kitsch" that it translates from the 
German as junk or trash.

Rick


At 02:46 PM 8/6/2007, you wrote:
>Is there any possibility that the entire "dump" was in fact what I call a
>resource pile?  I've seen lots of these on farms in various locales--a pile
>for stones and such (including broken grindstones and brick at times),
>another for wooden stuff, another for metal scrap.  Many farmers/ranchers
>were very frugal, and figured it all might come in handy some time.  But we
>tend to view their "resource piles" as unsightly dumps.  At the
>Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, MA, residents in both the 18th and
>19th centuries also allowed "dumps" of ceramics and glass to build up to be
>used for drainage, in one case in a privy, in another in a fence-ditch.  In
>the latter case the sherds and glass fragments probably also kept pesky
>groundhogs from digging their way under the fence.
>
>mcb