Boulders for the Canal

The fields around Fockbek had boulders which every plough knew, some standing clear and others hidden just below the earth, where they caught the iron and stopped the work of man and animal together. Farmers dug them out. The stones were rolled to the field margins and left there, being of no use to the soil and an old nuisance to anyone working it.

Claus Aad Fock saw useful material waiting in the wrong place. In the 1830s, timber and stone were needed beside the Eider Canal, and although a tree could be felled, cut to size and sold by measure, a boulder offered chiefly weight and difficulty. That was enough. He asked the farmers for their stones. Several looked at him as though he had requested spoilt straw, while others helped him lever the first one free and were glad to see it go.

Claus made no speech and promised no large profit, but set timbers against each stone, worked rollers beneath it and brought it slowly on to a wagon. Behind him, one patch of the field edge was clear.

Soon the boulders were gathered at a suitable place in the village, with the large stones together, the flat ones together, and timber stacked between them for other deliveries. The heap looked deliberate. While people still wondered whether such labour could pay, Claus was working, since he did not require an order to tell him that weight had a use somewhere.

Gathering those stones was merely the beginning. Every stone still had to leave the ground, reach the road and be taken to the water, and in wet weather the wagon wheels sank with discouraging thoroughness. Once the wagon was stuck fast. The animals had to be unharnessed and the boulder unloaded into the mud.

Claus studied the rut, returned the next morning with more planks, and laid a road across the soft ground before loading the same stone again. By evening it had joined the heap. He earned little that day, but he knew how to move the next one.

Along the Eider Canal, the boulders strengthened the banks against the steady work of water and soil, using beside the canal the very weight that had troubled the plough. The farmers lost an obstacle, and the canal gained material which nobody wished to make lighter.

As the first stones sold, Claus accepted more from the fields, paid carters and put his money into transport, while timber deliveries, bargains and muddy roads continued to claim his attention. The stockpile grew quickly. He was fond of starting several things at once, and where someone else saw a heap, he saw wagons, firm banks and another trade.

Soon there were more boulders in the yard than he could move himself. Then the large order on which he depended fell through. The buyer withdrew after the journeys had been made, the stones gathered and the money spent. No one paid for the labour in the heap.

Claus lost everything he had put into the venture, while the sums he owed remained due, so he sold what could be sold and settled what he could. The boulders remained. They were too heavy to throw away in disappointment and too little wanted to become money when money was needed.

Some people in the village advised him to stop. One man suggested taking the stones back to the fields, and Claus looked from him to the heap before asking, “And on which field does the money I lost grow?” There was no bitterness in it. A boulder did not grow lighter merely because it was being carried for the second time.

He kept the stones, arranged the yard, examined the roads and began again with smaller deliveries, selling timber where timber was wanted and bringing one stone where only one was needed. He did not wait for the lost order to return.

Seasons passed over the heap, with rain clearing the dust, frost finding the gaps and grass growing at the edges, until the stock resembled what failure commonly leaves behind. It was still stock. The buyer had withdrawn, but the work already done had not vanished.

Later, boulders were wanted again for the canal. Claus did not have to cross the fields to gather them, since the stones stood ready, sorted by size, with the roads tested and their transport better understood. Little by little, the heap was carted away.

The sale did not undo the failed order. Claus had lost everything and started again, but he started with what he had gathered and learnt, and the stones had stayed when the buyer did not. Their weight proved useful twice.

At last the yard was empty, the ploughs could pass through the fields, and the boulders lay beside the Eider Canal where their weight held the banks. Claus did not linger. He had timber to deliver, roads to inspect and other work to find, for an enterprise might have to wait without requiring him to do the same.