" Stoneboats" isn't a memory I cherish from earlier farming memories. We used one for stones every spring until we purchased a front end loader....still had to hand pick those damn stones but a t least we could dump them at field edges. if you have stones on your property now you will have some forever more, frost in the ground pushes them up every winter so a new "crop" is there for you every spring.
The biggest use we had for a stone boat was in the summer haying season, drug it behind the baler for weeks every summe (and someone had to ride it every minute...pick me) to build 10 bale stooks (80 lbs per bale)...many thousands of them a year......a stone boat just was work every time it came into play.
When I was a teenager (13 through 18) my dad put me on the train back to the home farm for the summer. I was the oldest grandchild in my grandpa's Clan. Now I am the oldest living male as my mom is still with us. That makes me the family Patriarch now. I should be proud, but somehow the loss of all those before me, and especially my own dad and my favorite uncle who taught me to shoot brings sadness and loss to the moment. Anyway, I digress.
Frankly, I miss pushing those stooks off the back of the stoneboat. But I don't miss the stone picking we did in the summer fallow. Why not? Cuz I pick 100x more right now on my own farm here in the east. My farm straddles the old glacial moraine that runs along the north shore of Lake Erie. My soil is called "gravel" for a reason.... Sometimes when people ask me what I grow, I answer "ROCKS". And we do! Thousands of them. Year after year after year.
I used to pick them with my loader tractor. It worked great. But it was still a pain getting up and down from the seat. Then I got a 4x4 ATV with a dump box. No more up and down. Just slide out, grab, and slide in. Best rock picking machine ever!
My wife and I (me in my mid 70s and her in her late 60s) pick rocks from spring after the ground thaws till it freezes again in late fall. It is fantastic exercise. Keeps us both young and healthy - which is one of the reasons why we bought a farm after I retired. My wife calls it "Squatts with Rocks". She says it beats the crap out of those fancy health gymns.
I have always been a big guy. Both tall and strong. But picking rocks, working on heavy machinery, and long farm walks all year long has been wonderful!
Please forgive a short story to illustrate. I was at a seed seminar the summer before Covid. This 30 something year old guy was having some fun with me - said farming was too hard for old guys like me. Another middle aged fellow spoke up and told the young guy to have more respect - that old man would probably whoop your butt. Peels of laughter from the gathered group. Then another fellow suggested arm wrestling. Normally, I would have politely declined but wtf - I was so much older it didn't really matter if I lost. No harm in that. Besides, it would be fun. I have not arm wrestled anyone in probably 30 years! I'm sure you already know what happened. It was over almost as soon as it began. I made a friend of that young fellow that day. He drops around every so often to talk farming. Even helped me pick rocks one day.
