Part 2: Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut

In my last blogpost, Part 1: Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut, I spent some time on how the small continent of Avalonia, which had split off from the proto African land mass of Gondwana came to be a part of the Eastern Upland region of Connecticut.
However, I left all of the land masses congealed as Pangaea. This congealed landmass answers the question of where our bedrock known as Avalonia came from. It also answers the question that due to the immense forces that were exerted upon Avalonia, the rock which was granitic in origin changed or metamorphosed into gneiss in our area.
I was writing this second part of the Geology of Our Vineyard in Connecticut when this timely article appeared in Newsweek: EARTH'S CONTINENTS HAVE BEEN MANGLED AND TORN APART OVER THE LAST 250 MILLION YEARS. HERE'S HOW. In that article there is a video on how the continents broke apart, which is exactly what I was going to blog about using pictures. Animation is much better and lets me skip 200 million years of time!
Glaciation Events in Connecticut:
Between 150,000 and 130,000 years ago, Connecticut may have been covered with a glacier during the Illinoian age, but not much is known about it. During the second glaciation event, known as the Wisconsin Ice Age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet, was located near Hudson's Bay to the north. This ice sheet entered Connecticut about 26,000 years ago, reached its maximum about 21,000 years ago, and was melted out of the state by 15,500 years ago. Mixtures of sand, gravel, rocks and boulders were frozen in the ice, picked up in the glacier and transported south.

Rocks carried and deposited by glaciers are called till and can range in size from clay to house sized boulders. These rocks in Connecticut came from Massachusetts, Vermont, New York and Quebec. Evidence of these rocks can be found all over our vineyard. We tried to remove the largest of these rocks when we planted our vines.

In 2013, shortly after planting our vines, our vineyard rows looked like this, thanks to glacial till from the Laurentian Ice Sheet:

They don't call where we live, Stonington, for nothing!
References:
1. EARTH'S CONTINENTS HAVE BEEN MANGLED AND TORN APART OVER THE LAST 250 MILLION YEARS. HERE'S HOW.
2. Long Island Sound Resource Center, Connecticut Geology: The Grain of the Land.
3. Illustraction of the Laurentian Ice Sheet from: Friends of Mianus River Park 4. Avalonia - Geologic History exerpted from WRITTEN IN STONE: A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STA TES, ©1989 by Chet Raymo and Maureen E. Raymo.
5. Natural Resources and Conservation Service, Soil Catenas of Connecticut.