“… The gaps, I mean, no one has seen them made or heard them made, but at spring mending-time we find them there.”

When poet Robert Frost wrote that line in “Mending Wall,” he must have had people like Ken and Darcy Shaw of Turner in mind.

When the couple bought their 5 acres of land nine years ago, they discovered a stone wall buried beneath brush and fallen debris. Trees and bushes jutted out 10 feet from the wall.

Determined to restore the wall lining most of their property to its former beauty, the Shaws spent the first year or two cleaning away brush and weed-whacking the tall grass that obscured the stones and rocks.

Their mission: to not only restore but to extend the stone wall.

And it continues, with Shaw constantly adjusting and readjusting stones in the wall measuring some 4 feet wide and 3 feet tall – and running a guesstimated 1,500 feet long.

The original owners of the property, George and Minnie Doe, had a large farm that has been called Doe Field for years, even though the farm no longer exists, says Darcy.

The Does “killed two birds with one stone,” as local historians tell it, by stacking the rocks and boulders they dug up while plowing the land around the property to keep the farm animals contained.

And that was the start of what has become a labor of love for the Shaws.

Each year, frost heaves the land and moves a few stones that ultimately displace the line the Shaws have worked so hard to perfect. So passionate about maintaining the wall, Ken admits to working on any given day during a January thaw.

Armed with a 4-foot-long stick fitted with a level, he prods and pokes. He uses the level to help find the rocks that have shifted and repositions them.

“It is like building a 3-D puzzle,” he says. “Some people count sheep at night. I count rocks. It’s my relaxation.”

And right there to help piece that puzzle together is Darcy who has driven their Kubota, a tractor with a 4-foot front bucket, moving rocks and positioning stones into their designated spots – under Ken’s watchful eye.

That tractor, described by Ken as indispensible, was purchased because it’s bigger than his dad’s. “Grown-up men seek to outdo their fathers,” he says with a chuckle.

The Shaws have received stones for the wall from a variety of sources. Darcy and their two daughters collected rocks while on vacation in Cape Cod. Friends and family alike have been given friendly orders to search for flat rocks to go on the top of the wall, and small ones to plug a hole in just the right place. Four or five dump truck loads were provided by Shaw’s friend Kurt Youland.

Other stones have a bitter-sweet history. “Actually, it’s kind of sad,” says Ken, explaining: “A lot of rock came from Bob Leavitt’s farm.” (Robert Leavitt, a hard-working 51-year-old farmer, was killed Monday when he was pinned beneath a tractor while tedding hay near the Beedy Farm in Hartford.)

“He always had a big smile on his face as I cleared his walls for him,” Ken recalls.

Turner is known for its fertile farmland, land settled after the Revolutionary War. History shows a shift in the mid-1700s from the European practice of common herding to individual ownership, where farmers no longer depended upon a community shepherd or herder of livestock and, thus, needed to build fences or walls to keep livestock within their boundaries.

Such was the case for years, and now the Shaws and other homeowners regard those boundaries as architectural wonders tying them to the heritage of their land.

The stonewall also offers the Shaws a chance to connect with neighbors who often stop by to inspect the latest repositioning. And Ken has helped many neighbors rebuild walls on their properties – giving new meaning to Frost’s “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Ken says for some, namely golfers at Turner Highlands, a great day is when they get the ball from tee to hole well enough to shoot a 75. As good as that might feel, he says he gets the satisfaction of knowing that what he does to fill a hole in his stonewall will last beyond any particular day.

Given how long stonewalls in Turner have lasted, Ken just might have the edge.