Old Farms - Looking for strategies

Good Afternoon,
While wasting away waiting for all this snow to leave, I have procured permission to hunt four old farms of people i know, or friends of friends. Two of them are from the late 1700s, and two are from early to mid 1800s. The houses are all still standing, but some of the barns have either been replaced, or a newer barn added in a spot different from the original barn. As I could obviously spend days, weeks, months or years on any of the properties, I am curious what areas have produced either relics or coins consistently for folks. I would initially think yard areas or the areas between house and barn, or maybe the lanes from the house/barn to the roadways? Are relics more likely around the barns and coins more likely around the homes? Lastly, two of them have pretty extensive vegetable gardens, which have been in the same place for a very long time. Any ideas if they would be expected to be more or less productive for items compared to the other areas?

Even with my limited number times detecting this past year, I am definitely in the mindset of "any time detecting is better than most other times.." but I know a couple of the landowners will be following me around out of interest so starting off on a right foot might make a difference in future visits if they see something interesting come out of the ground.

Thanks for any feedback.

Rod - PA
Tom D calibrated F75 DST - so deep I pulled some Chinese coins using a hole in PA.

Get ready for some old coin finds....I can almost guarantee it. Usually, lots of big iron around the barn. Most of the coinage will be around the house, mixed with old iron nails and such. The fields will give up a few goodies also.
Try to imagine yourself at that place back in the times. Where would you have picnics, gatherings, hang the cloths, build the privies, sell produce, stash a cache, etc, etc. Good luck Rod, keep us up on the finds.

A guy who signs as "Will_Penny" on other forums uses a Whites Sierra Madre Detector and a 25" Magnum Force coil to find privies. Then they dig them out and get all those lovely medicine bottles.

I just had a bit of double luck and got one of the coils and one of the detectors from different sources in the same week! Only problem is that the ground is so darned hard here in AZ, that I suspect folks just went out in the brush, did a good check for rattlesnakes and got on with it - LOL. Probably have to sell the whole rig to some easterner with nice old deep privies to dig out!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2014 11:02PM by lytle78.

I concur with Ozzie, however if the sites are as old as you say be prepared to be digging ALOT of iron and ALOT of various nails from the last 200yrs.

I've been hunting my buddy's 200yr old farm site for 3yrs now and it's amazing the things I've found however it's frustrating the amount of junk and over load signals I've had to remove. I've even dug a couple pits and excavated with a monster rare earth magnet just to remove the nails!
There are some areas that will be so heavy with junk as they threw everything in the woods, burned it and ect., you may want to avoid until there's nothing else to search.
I've found my oldest coins ever on this site and I left it many times feeling incredibly happy but probably even more times incredibly frustrated!

Be patient, do your research, have fun


Aaron

I live in PA also. I have hunted farms in the past. Most of the farms in my area are of the Amish or Mennonite order. Let me state right away that kids lose the most money and plain people did not give much money to the kids. Simple as that.

Beware around the barn. This is where you will encounter the most iron and trash. The barn serves many purposes and trash was scattered.

Try to not let the size of the farm overwhelm you. If you know the people you can do return hunts. The first thing to do is decide if you are going to hunt the fields. Why? Because you can't hunt after they are planted.

Try to do the high traffic areas slow and from many directions. Path to the outhouse. Path to the parking areas. Clothslines, And basically any other high traffic area. Like I said. You need to pick a section and spend the day there. If they have nice grass do them early in the Spring right after the thaw. Good lawns bounce back quick from plugs. You can basiclly do anything to a yard in the spring and it will recover very quickly.

When the heat is on you need to move away from the nice yards and hit those out of the way places.

But like I said you only have before planting or after harvest to hit the fields.

Farms can great or poor. It depends who lived there and how much trash they spread around. Speaking of trash. That is one of the out of the way places to hit in the summer. Where they burn the trash and path to it.

If you live near Lancaster give me a PM I would love to help.

Old pictures can give you ideas where things were in the old days comes to mind..

Bet you find a large cent or two as money was tight.....find out where they had the picnics or perhaps area card games and sure to find some keepers.

Personally I had the most luck for silver at the entrance of the old barns where there was activity putting in and taking out...

A bit different from here in the uk. Most of our old farms are still occupied, other than those that vanished hundreds of years ago. I shudder to think what is lying under some of our old farms gardens ,where nobody ever gets to go. However a different story in our fields, hundreds of years of history and anything can turn up!