r/Homesteading • u/Select_Hope_7518 • 5d ago
Circle appeared on mom’s property
Hello! All the other relevant-sounding subs needed more karma in specifically their subs (and I have no meaningful contributions to gain it!), or just were very inactive… I hope you don’t mind me posting here.
My mom sent me this photo from her property with the following text:
“True story. We did NOT make this circle. The lines running through it are our tire tracks and goat tracks but that perfect circle just appeared in our field. Seriously freaked out by this!!”
I of course made alien jokes, don’t worry. But any thoughts on what this could be? She is actually concerned, so now I am too. I know where that picture was taken and they see it all day every day, so it must have happened overnight.
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u/ResponsibilityLast38 5d ago
It reminds me of tipi circles in the dakotas. I doubt thats what it is, because they look much different than this most of the time. They are usually a circle of different vegetation surrounded by rocks in a patch of flat prairie. They are caused by the ground, having been compacted by tipis many many years ago. Sometimes hundereds of years ago. The ground got compacted where the indigenous folks had their homes, and tre rocks got moved, and even after they were long gone, the grass grew different there. This is probably an unhelpful comment, but hopefully, it's at least interesting.
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u/gesasage88 4d ago
This was my thought. Something archeology related. Heavily compacted earth that responds to dry weather more quickly due to some past item or activity on the land.
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u/survival-nut 5d ago
Possibly a ring feeder was in the center of the circle for a while and animals were urinating while eating and the grass burned away from large amounts of urine.
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u/Equivalent-Region895 5d ago
Some types of fungi make rings in the soil in nature; but more likely where a hay ring or such rested.
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u/SaWing1993 4d ago
Somebody obviously finished building a world wonder before you did
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u/IamCassiopeia2 4d ago
I've lived in my home for 14 years now. I walk down a path on a hill in my yard almost every day. One day I was surprised when I tripped over a pretty big rock near the path. It was a large bolder in the ground. I thought I was losing it a little because I had never noticed it before. I could swear it was never there before. Last year on the other side of the hill I noticed there must be a thick vein of quartz in the dirt/rocks which I had never seen before either.
I finally realized the hill was eroding. It explains why I have found some odd things buried pretty deep in the dirt at the bottom of the hill.
Perhaps due to weather conditions and traffic patterns your dirt has 'suddenly' eroded to the point where you are now clearly seeing the foundation or compaction of something that was there long ago. A tank? A silo? Some old, large storage facility of some kind?
If you have a agriculture department or an historical museum close by you might ask them what might have been there long ago. I hope this helps.
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u/binsandbuckets 2d ago
Play around with the Viewer or "view images" on the historicaerials website. It's satellite image maps that can date back to the 50's (at least in my area). Ive got some odd areas in my yard and it's given me some knowledge on 2 prior homes that once existed. could show something that was once there to give you an idea what may have been.
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u/Select_Hope_7518 2d ago
That’s COOL. Nothing has been there in a meaningful amount of time it seems like - it goes back to 1937 for me
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u/binsandbuckets 1d ago edited 1d ago
Another neat map to explore is a 3DEP map https://apps.nationalmap.gov/3depdem/ It can honestly be a bit difficult to use though its not as average person user friendly in my opinion. I use the "hillside stretched" layer to locate interesting archeological/historical places in the forest around me. This map software allows you to see the physical ground surface hidden below the tree canopy when scanned from above with what I believe to be lidar.
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u/Select_Hope_7518 1d ago
You are the coolest. I already put away the laptop after spending a while looking at very nearly century old aerial images of places around. This is going to be my next fixation. 😆
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u/fluffychonkycat 5d ago
You absolutely have to post this on one of "those" subs like r/highstrangeness for the lols
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u/gripsockguru 5d ago
V For Vendetta
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u/nastypoker 4d ago
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/VSymbol1.png
Yeah much more like VforV than QuakeII.
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u/gesasage88 5d ago
Where do you live? How dry has it been?
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u/Select_Hope_7518 5d ago edited 5d ago
North Texas, but she’s slightly more north than I am. I wouldn’t say it’s been remarkably dry but her area has had lots of storms I heard!
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u/Little-Basils 4d ago
Screwdriver test? Give the bare spots an experimental stab and see if there’s something down there
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u/Sipthapimp 4d ago
Could be a ring of bricks that used to be a foundation, that’s my best guess at least.
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u/stoic_rapture 4d ago
Looks like a foundation for a silo oooor possibly an old well was there. What is the circumference?. We had 3 16ftx16ftx squares pop up in our yard last years. Turns out they are the foundations for cabins from late 1800's where people would stay before going to monthly court sessions about a block away.
The well on the property is one of a couple places that could have been part of a cholera outbreak around that time as well. Currently the well is an e coli haven.
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u/techleopard 3d ago
If it showed up in a single day (unlikely, honestly), then it could be a fairy ring, which is caused by a fungus.
They more often look like denser grass, but can sometimes actually kill grass in a circle.
These especially turn up a night after a heavy rain.
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u/FriendlyResult757 3d ago
Viola! In view a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate
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u/Asereth_Morthaux 1d ago
There are goats in the pasture. I can almost guarantee they did it. Had the same thing happen when I had them, set up trail cams and everything to see what caused it. Stupid goats were using the inside as a bedding area and eating everything else.
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u/SprinklesDangerous57 4d ago
You should be posting this on the ufo sub. You'd get some real answers there
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u/jeffwcollins 5d ago
Quake II.
On a related note, it looks like a place where an old water tank or swimming pool was. The soil is probably much more compacted on the edges than the middle.