Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Old windmill

Last fall I took a bike ride on Moody Road and found this picturesque structure along the way.
It looks a bit like an old well, but it is merely the remains of an old windmill
The pump underneath looks like it could still pump water if it were primed.
Coming back a bit further south I noticed these old gate posts, all that remains of an old fence. Was the fence taken down because the farm no longer had animals, or because modern farm equipment is too wide to pass though this gate?
Concrete markers very much like this still mark property lines throughout the countryside.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Those are not actually property markers; they are concrete structures sunk into the ground, designed to provide a point at which the fences which they were attached to could be anchored.

There are still tons of them around, and they exist in many forms. Down around Monon, where there is an abundance of field stone, they're often made of stone.

If you tried to build a fence without sturdy support at the gates and corners, soon the pressures caused by stretching the fence would either pull up the posts at the corners, or cause the fence to sag.