LEYDEN — With a small Highway Department and one mowing machine, some residents pitched the idea in the September edition of the town newsletter to create the Friends of the Leyden DPW, which would see them mow their frontage to take the load off the town.

As with anything, town officials began to look at the legality of mowing due to property lines and the pesky issue of fences that may impede mowing, as one of the requests in the newsletter was “those of us with fences need to move the fences back from the road edge allowing mowing.”

Upon doing some research, Town Coordinator Michele Giarusso and other officials discovered Leyden was actually not in compliance with Massachusetts General Law Chapter 49, Section 1.

“The mayor of each city, subject to confirmation by the City Council and the selectmen of each town shall annually appoint two or more fence viewers,” the statute reads, “to hold office for one year and until their successors are qualified.”

Everything you could ever want to know about Massachusetts fence laws is contained in Chapter 49, as it lays out the duties of fence viewers, handling disputes between landowners, maintaining fences around town commons and numerous other regulations. The chapter also ties in pound keepers and field drivers — both of which are responsible for taking care of livestock who have escaped their farms — laying out everything colonial-era Massachusetts residents needed to sustain their agricultural lifestyle.

Fast forward a few hundred years and some of these posts are quite outdated, although Giarusso said they are “still on the books.”

“Town Meeting got rid of it. … I think no one really cared, they were like, ‘None of us have animals,’” Giarusso said of a Leyden Town Meeting vote seven years ago to remove the fence viewer position, among other similar jobs. Buckland made a similar move in 2013 through a Selectboard vote. “It should be in the Modernization Act to get rid of these.”

An overview of fence viewing

Luckily for those of us in the Pioneer Valley who have wondered what a fence viewer does, the preeminent scholar on all things fence viewing resides in Pelham. Joseph Larson, a professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Natural Sciences, published “Handbook on Fence Viewers and Laws on Fences in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” in 2002 alongside his late friend George Cramer.

“There are other states in the nation that have them, particularly when you get out to cattle country,” Larson said by phone. “It is a legal requirement to have a fence viewer.”

Larson’s informal handbook lays out the history of the position dating back to 1647, when the colonial government recognized it needed to protect corn crops from cattle by using fences.

“The law regarding appointments of fence viewers has not been changed in any material way since 1647, or 1793, when Samuel Freeman described the duties of town officers,” Larson wrote. “Although their general responsibilities, and the laws governing who is responsible for fencing and how the costs are met, have changed, many of the original colonial phrases can still be found in the current state statutes.”

While the position and its regulations haven’t really changed, the agricultural landscape of the state has, as the wide swaths of cropland have either reverted to forest, such as here in western Massachusetts, or are now urban and suburban residential centers.

“When fence viewers were first established, each town was dependent on raising most of its own food for survival,” Larson wrote. “Erecting and maintaining fences between them helped to ensure survival and it was deemed reasonable that all parties share in the cost. If they could not agree, fence viewers were authorized to arrive at solutions that would be enforced by the courts.”

Larson noted fence viewers are paid at the “magnificent rate” of $5 per day employed. He has served as one of Pelham’s fence viewers for more than 20 years and was called out just once for a fence dispute.

“Handbook on Fence Viewers and Laws on Fences in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” can be found for free online at bit.ly/3TKIstu.

Both Leyden and Buckland have since appointed fence viewers. In the same vein, Deerfield was also struggling to find a fence viewer until Sept. 18, when John Franc stepped up.

Franc, who has a lifetime of experience working with maps, said he saw the position posted on Deerfield’s website and his interest in the role led him to finding Larson’s handbook.

“A man in the audience of the town of Deerfield’s Selectboard meeting volunteered that he was previously a fence viewer and was never called out for five years,” Franc said. “If I’m ever called to view a fence, I should frame the $5 on the wall.”

Chris Larabee can be reached at clarabee@recorder.com.