Rocks in Central Oregon

Every kid that grew up in Jefferson County hates picking rocks. You heard right, picking rocks. The fastest growing, most dependable crop you can count on growing every year, dry years, wet years, cold years, hot years, all the time.

One of my friends that now has a rock ranch that lets tourists pick rocks for a fee.  He said I got so sick of picking rocks I decided to let the city folks pay me to do it.  Smart man but it did not work for us as our rocks were not agates and thundereggs which grown on his place.

Due to the fact there are so many rocks people have got very ingenious about how to use rocks.  In the settlers days they made their houses out of rocks.

This is an old barn made out of rocks that is still in use for shelter for the animals.

The top of the barn is covered with old hay bales.  Birds love to make nests in the hay.

When I was a kid we had a milk barn that was made out of chicken wire with hay bales in between the two layers of chicken wire. It was warm and cozy.

You can see in this photo where they cut poles to lay on the rocks to hold up the hay bales.

The cows today were laying outside but they do love it when it gets stormy

Here is an example of one rock wall out of rocks.

A lot of people use the rocks to line the driveways to keep the gravel contained. A cheap way to line the driveway and a good way to get rid of rocks.

Everywhere you look people build rock gardens or flower gardens out of the rocks. Kind of funny that people do anything to get rid of their rocks and people on the other side of the mountain actually buy rocks for stuff like this.

I love the light pole they built. They also made a fence. They used them to line the gravel too. A really pretty yard and almost all of it is made with rock.

They got rid of a lot of rock covering this slope up to their house with rocks and more rocks.

This person used rocks everywhere and made some really neat designs with them. I just love what they have done with them.

These were more functional instead of pretty as farmer used them for heavy corner posts for their fences.  Lots of rocks gone and are very sturdy for your corner posts.


Just a few of the things that Central Oregonians have done to use the rocks that are everywhere in our country. You pick them all up and by next spring you will have a bunch more to pick up. Some farmers had what they called a bad strip where they would just dump the rocks in big piles but most put them to some use.