Old Fields, any tips or experiences?

JakePhelps

JakePhelps

Silver Member
Jul 7, 2005
3,020
16
Massachusetts
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Cibola
Theres alot of old fields in my town and i have detected a few with decent results. I dont think permission will be very hard to get around here as most of the folks are really old and are very interested in history and whats in their fields. My concern is scanning the fields ::) Some of these fields may be miles long :o From my experience the goodies are dispersed very randomly throughout the filed, but there is alot near old trees, hills, entrances to fileds, etc...But how do you guys go about scanning the huge fields? so far i have been just wondering around aimlessly in no pattern whatsoever :-\ Is there some kind of method that is good for scanning huge fields? O yea-my coil is only around 8 inches wide and there is no aftermarket coils available for my BH, so i cant cover alotta ground :(
 

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One tip I can think of is try looking for little reflected sparkles in an are indicating possible broken glass or glazed pottery. Also check near the bigger trees-what is a small tree now was probably not even growing depending on the time frame of what you're searching for. Look for older streams in the area-if they didn't dig a well then they carried water to where they were living. HH
 

Nothing beats some good ole research. Find some old maps, topo maps are the best. Look for old roads, building, etc on the maps. Then go find in the fields and get to detecting. Without research your just shootin in the dark and hoping to get lucky.
 

Hey Phelps

I would try to find some old tree stumps, or a area where trees are in a certain configuration.
I have found bigtime silver that way. Look for old trails as well.

Regards Yoda 8)
 

Thanks guys! I have had good luck with small streams too. but most of the fields i will detect in are just farming fields that havent changed since they were first used, so they are just wide open fields with tall grass. And i dont know if i should concentrate on the center, go in lines like mowing the lawn, or what?
 

I find it best just to go back and forth in lines even if you don't cover the whole area you'll know what you didn't cover incase you ever go back.

HH Matt
 

thats what i used to do, just scan around randomly, then you always knonw theres something left u missed while scanning randomly lol
 

Jake, my father in law just put his land up for sale(30acres) right down the road from you. Its on Pearl st in gardner. There used to be a barn behind his house(since rotted away) and at one time a garage in his driveway. They moved it to the bottom of the hill in Ashburnham in the 40s and is being used to day has a barn. The land is all wooded in the back. I pulled out an old bottle early this year out behind that trailer that has all the cars infront of it. The land has never been detected before and the house was built in the 30s. Let me know it you are interested in hitting this area. I intend to hit it with my 9year old after school this week.
 

Nearly every field has at least a cow path along one side. People tend to travel along these paths also for easier navigation. Ditto the two rut wagon pathss. Check around them . Look for old ravines or cuts along the edges of fields. Most farmers use at least one or two for a trash dump and usually have for generations. Also look for places a footpath or cart patth crosses a brook or small stream, always good. Good luck! JIM
 

In the Southeast where I am from, a lot of times the houses were in the corner of the property near the road on really old farms. Reason is that the more land that was made into driveway and yard was less that could be farmed. If you can establish what was raised there it would help. If it was beef, dairy, or especially pork, the barn is going to be on the opposite side of the property due to the summertime smell. If it is just a plain old grass field, chances are good that it had cattle on it at some time. Good luck and I hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.
 

Heck, this all helps me out. I've been wanting to do some old fields, they're all over in my area and I see often where the apple farmers take out a grove of old trees in preperation for planting new ones.
The corn is almost ready to be harvested and that's going to open up a lot of fields pretty soon.

DigEmAll said:
...? If it was beef, dairy, or especially pork, the barn is going to be on the opposite side of the property due to the summertime smell.?
Click to expand...

Wow, I never knew way the barns were on the other side of the road. I always wondered why the towns always made the paved roads right thru the middle of the farmers properties! :o

I'm with Matt, walk straight even lines back and forth, make a mental note on where you stopped at and to start with the next time you get back there. I can imagine that the fields would take a long time to do, but can be very promising by the sounds of things and some of the posts I've seen on this site.

You'd better get a hold of Rebelinmass, opportunity is nocking! ;)

Chris
 

Yes i have seen a few barns located across the street from a property. I dont think im gonna start checking out fields intull next spring/summer. The fields im thinking of are just grass not crops, so theres no time i have to wait until.
 

aerial photos may show you old roadbeds, paths or anomalies that will help narrow the field,,,look around the field on the photos for roadbeds and such crossing or circling the field.......terraserver is decent and free.....there is a link on here somewhere to it .......gldhntr
 

digumall, is there a way to get better resolution from the site you listed ? the pics are very close and would be great but resolution was not very good on the ones i looked at, and some were in lightly populated areas ........thanks,,,,,,,,gldhntr
 

Goldhunter, unfortunantly it is at the mercy of whomever makes the decisions on what the satelite takes pictures of. But, it is still a useful tool. You can take the wife to Italy and go see the Vatican for free!!!! Can't beat that! There is at least one other satelite imagery site on the net. Try www.teraserver.com .

Hope that helps you out!
 

thanks d.e.a. terraserver/terraclient is about the best i have found.............gldhntr
 

one thing you can do is walk the fields righht after they have been cleared for planting. and look as was suggested for remailns of broken glass or wood etc. a lot of old fields did have small out buildings in them and farmers did have small dumps and favorite places to eat

you can aso get old maps and overlay em on the fields. what is field today may have been a small homestead years ago. I know of one town that the oldest house a 2 room cabin was located in what is today the middle of a cemetary. the well is still there as is part of the foundation, but it became a cemetary in the late 1700's and noone would ever have suspected that the orginal settler built his home in the same place. I found through using very old plat maps from the next town over and getting ahold of a couple of old journels. the man built his house by a spring, dug his well, then a few years later moved up the road to a hillock over looking the present day high school and finally across the main road to what is now a fairly impressive mansion that is still in his family over the period of 50 years. At some point he donated the land for the cemetary to his church and the town forgot about his house. His descendants sold the land for the high school to the town and again the house was forgotten. never got to detect the cemetary, but did get a few nice finds from the high school/house

the history of mass has turned over and been rebuilt so many times it is not funny and at times very convoluted

HH Vrent
 

Thanks fot the tips guys! Hopefully ill start asking around next spring. There are so many fields in my town its amazing! None of them have crops in them, just grass though.
 

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