I am a grad student archaeologist working in CT. This is something I've always wondered as I frequently observe this phenomena in my work. All across New England there are stone walls on people's properties and throughout the wooded areas and forests that no longer contain a meadow. Many of these walls are demarcations of former crops fields and grazing pastures. Many of these walls can be seen while driving around the countryside or walking through state parks. I've also worked in historic conservation and I've always been struck by older painting of NE towns and countryside (18th-19th century) showing rolling meadows and fields and very little woodland. Seems to me that New England back then certainly looked much more similar to "old" England. (This may not be unique to NE in the US, it's just the area I've personally observed)
The genesis for my question comes from a very amateur observation of the state of similarly walled meadows and pastures across the pond in the UK. There it would seem, pastures and meadows that were once fully utilised are still kept cleared, for the most part. Perhaps this is due to the significance of the "rolling meadows" in UK national identity and character.
I suppose you could also look at this question from the opposite angle and ask why the UK has preserved open land when it is no longer necessary.
I understand that the answer could simply be that economic conditions were such that these meadows fell into disuse and abandonment. I remember reading a statistic discussing how NE is actually at one of the highest amount percentage of woodland and forest since Europeans arrived and began clearing it away. This appears to have occurred because of the very phenomena I'm talking about.
Basically I'm hoping someone can lend expertise and detail even though this may be very simple.
EDIT: I wonder if anyone has any knowledge on the situation in the UK. If I'm not mistaken, cultivated land has decreased over the past century (I don't know by what percentage this is just off the top of my head). What factors have kept UK fields cleared? Is it that they're all still utilised somehow contrary to what I thought? Or is it Cultural? Or flora related somehow? (Different tree species?)
There are several reasons, all interrelated.
First, much of the soil in New England, especially the more northern parts and hillsides, is heavy clay. In the part of Vermont where I live, if you go down over a foot or so, you hit "hardpan" - a clay so compressed it is impermeable not just to water, but to shovels. Clay is often full of nutrients, but very difficult to work with plows and tillers, particularly in the wet spring when you need to break it up for planting.
The stone walls and stone piles you see around New England were not solely or even mostly built to mark boundaries. They were built to have a place to put the stones. Every spring the frost pushes stones up from underground, and to till or even mow, those stones have to be removed. In fact, the size of the stones in a wall is a good indication of what a field was used for. If the stones are all above soccer ball size, it was likely a pasture. If they are commonly smaller (and larger) odds are it was tilled.
Another major factor is the very short growing season and heavy moisture. This meant that forage crops - grass, for simplicity's sake - was the easiest crop to grow. So sheep were the big crop here around the time of the Civil War. And, yes, Vermont was only 10 to 20% forested, but is now about 80%. Pictures from the late 19th century show a radically different landscape.
What happened? The Midwest. 10 to 15 feet of topsoil, flat ground, and canals then railroads to move produce to markets. Farmers, not being stupid, moved out in large numbers. Vermont shifted over to dairy as its primary agricultural crop. The woolen mills along the rivers, like the Connecticut, eventually closed down as well.
Why did it return to woodland? Trees, to put it crudely, are weeds in New England - they are what you get if you do nothing. An open meadow will be shrubs in five years, first generation trees (poplar, willow, grey birch and other junk species) in ten and in 20 years will take saws and a bulldozer to clear back to pasture. In 150 or so it will be climax forest, beech/maple or oak/spruce complex depending on soil, elevation and exposure.
Sources: The Northern Forest; Reading The Forested Landscape; 1948 Yearbook of Forestry (and others).
Thanks for your answer! This all makes sense and is basically what I suspected. I wonder if anyone has any knowledge on the situation in the UK. If not mistaken, cultivated land has decreased (I don't know by what percentage this is just off the top of my head). What factors have kept UK fields cleared? Is it that they're all still used contrary to what I thought? Cultural? Or flora related somehow? (Different tree species?)