Tag: agriculture

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Dawn on the Farmlands of Durham

Yankee Farmlands
Yankee Farmlands № 37 (Old barns at dawn, Durham, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 37”
Old barns at dawn, Durham, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Faint clouds cling to hills and pastures of the Coginchaug River Valley in Central Connecticut. Warm, morning sunlight struggles to permeate the heavy air over a complex of old barns and sheds clad with weathered planks and crowned by sheet metal and shingles. Nestled into the buildings is a cozy barnyard, bound by split-rails and cloaked in shadow beneath a shade tree.

Throughout most of Southern New England’s agricultural past, barn roofs were dressed with wooden shingles. Self-reliant farmers of that era could hand-split these shingles, or “shakes”, off logs harvested from their woodlot, thus eliminating the need to buy anything besides the necessary fasteners. With only a few exceptions, wooden shingles were the perfect solution in those early days, providing a durable, homemade roof which could potentially last two or three decades.

Perhaps the only glaring difficulty presented by wooden shingles was the simple fact that they were highly flammable. Fire could quickly lay waste to timber-framed barns and roofs clad in wood only hastened the destruction. For that matter, farm houses were oftentimes roofed with the same wooden shingles as their companion barns, so if either structure caught fire, all it may have taken was a few stray embers to set the other building ablaze.

Alternatives to the wooden shingle such as metal barn roofing, often in the form of corrugate sheets, didn’t arise until the late 1800s and grew in popularity after the turn of the century. Northern New Englanders, possibly owing to their harsher winters, adopted metal roofing a bit more readily more than their neighbors in Southern New England who instead tended to favor slightly less resilient asphalt shingles.

In “Yankee Farmlands № 37” (above), we see a range of roofing materials that have likely been applied as needed throughout the decades. The largest barn is capped with old, wavy tin sheeting, while a small shed on the perimeter of the barnyard sports a more modern steel roof with patterned ribs. Asphalt shingles have also managed their way into the mix, covering the addition beside the large barn and even capping the old silo.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Summertime Orchards of New Hartford

Yankee Farmlands № 36 (Pear Tree beside an old fieldstone wall in an orchard, New Hartford, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 36”
Orchard beside an old fieldstone wall, New Hartford, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

A thriving pear tree, its branches bowing with the weight of ripe fruit, arches over a fieldstone wall at the edge of an orchard in Northern Connecticut. Distant apple trees promise an equally generous harvest as gentle clouds soar overhead.

An 1838 book, The New American Orchardist, commented that “next to the apple, the fruit tree most generally cultivated in New England is the pear.” The author went on to explain that, despite looking very similar, pear trees are actually quite different from apple trees. “The pear tree”, we are reminded,” also differs essentially from the apple in its superior longevity.”

Indeed, the oldest cultivated fruit tree still alive in the United States is the famed Endicott Pear Tree in Essex County, Massachusetts. So named because it was raised by John Endicott, the first governor of Massachusetts, the tree is believed to have been planted roughly a decade after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. To this day, at an age of about 385, it still produces fruit.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 36” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

A Silent Barn in New Milford

Yankee Farmlands № 35 (Hay Barn, New Milford, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 35”
Hay barn and bale elevator at dawn, New Milford, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Dawn breaks over farmland in Western Connecticut on a humid summer morning. A bale elevator is perched silently at the open door of a barn overlooking woodlands in the valley below which glow with a luminous mist as sharply-angled sunlight pierces the canopy.

Photographing agricultural landscapes can occasionally be tricky, for unlike the wildlands that I shoot, farms are essentially private, man-made landscapes where the presence of a photographer wandering around in the wee hours of the morning is not always welcome. But from time to time I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with farmers that seem to understand intimately what draws photographers such as myself to their fields, rolling pastures and rustic barns.

Much like landscape photography, farming in New England generally isn’t easy or particularly lucrative work: farmers do it because they love it. They appreciate being on the land and being attuned with seasonal rhythms. A Connecticut tobacco farmer once explained that farming “isn’t a job, it’s a life.” That brand of passion, commitment and sincerity could just as easily explain the fervor with which the most dedicated landscape photographers approach their art.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 35” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Fields of Kale at West Granby

Yankee Farmlands № 32 (Farm field with kale, Granby, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 32”
Field of kale, Granby, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

In the latest addition to my Yankee Farmlands project, wrinkled plumes of kale climb over encroaching weeds on a swath of sunny cropland in the hills of West Granby. Warm, summertime air drifts lazily through the field, the breeze too faint to stir the still forests along the farm edge.

Vegetables such as kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi and brussel sprouts are popular greens that occasionally even share the same field. But would you believe that every one of those vegetables represents the same species? That’s right… even though they may look dramatically different, they all possess genes which are virtually identical to those of a weed known as “wild lettuce”.

How was such a diverse array of vegetables derived from a single species? Thousands of years ago, early farmers carefully selected generation after generation of cultivated wild lettuce to promote certain desired traits: long stems for kohlrabi, enlarged flower buds for broccoli, broad leaves for kale and so on.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 32” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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Be sure to check out all of my work in my ever-growing Yankee Farmlands project, a series which celebrates the agricultural heritage of Southern New England through the beautiful farmlands of Connecticut.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Fieldstone Walls of New England

Yankee Farmlands № 31 (Fieldstone wall in Bolton, Connecticut, USA)
“Yankee Farmlands № 31”
Bolton, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

“Yankee Farmlands № 31” is the latest installment in an on-going project of mine in which I celebrate the agricultural heritage of New England through the scenic farmlands of Connecticut. This time around, we find ourselves in the small town of Bolton, peering at a barn and forest-bound meadow over the lichen-encrusted rocks of an iconic fieldstone wall.

Most of New England’s fieldstone walls were built 150 to 200 years ago during an era in which an ever-growing population was feverishly clearing new farmland. Exhausting labor went into constructing these walls as untold tons of stone were plucked from the upper layers of soil, hauled off to the outskirts of the pasture or field and loosely stacked by hand.

These relict stone walls are celebrated for their rustic aesthetic these days, but we might be surprised to discover that they were considered rather mundane at the time of their construction. For the Yankee farmers that built them, fieldstone walls merely represented a practical way to dispose of agricultural refuse. It wasn’t until the 20th-century, when much of New England’s age-old agrarian ways had faded, that rustic stone walls became romantic relics of a simpler, unhurried era in the region’s history.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 31” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Mud Season in Southern New England

Yankee Farmlands № 26 (Corn field in Bloomfield, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 26”
Bloomfield, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

My latest addition to the Yankee Farmlands collection brings us to the town of Bloomfield in Northern Connecticut, where the broken stalks from last year’s corn crop stand in a field which has nearly flooded as warm spells melt away the thick snow pack.

“Mud Season” is the not-too-affectionate term for this time of year in New England. It’s that month-long stretch beginning in late March when the snows are melting away even though the soil below the surface of the ground remains frozen. Meltwater can’t drain through the icy underlayer, so it becomes trapped at the surface and produces a thick slurry of mud.

This was a major source of difficulty in the old days before most of Connecticut’s roads were paved. Horses, wagon wheels and even early cars would get swallowed up in the deep, rutted mud of dirt roads. The resulting mess perennially had a significant impact upon travel in the early springtime. Even still, we here in Southern New England have always had it easier than our neighbors further north. Mud season is far worse in Northern New England, where lower temperatures can freeze the ground much more deeply and springtime mud can hang around well into June!

On a different note, the particular swath of cropland shown here in “Yankee Farmlands № 26” may look like a rather ordinary corn field. But you won’t find any barns or a family farmhouse on this property, because the land is actually owned by the State of Connecticut. This stretch of flatland is a large, designated flood control area nestled amidst the mostly suburban landscape of Bloomfield. Although full-blown floods don’t occur here very often, setting aside this low-lying, poorly-drained area helps protect against unwise development and comes with accompanying benefit of preserving open space. Although I suppose that the state government might grow its own corn here for one reason or another, it seems much more likely that the land is leased to a local farmer who lives off-site and works it as remote field in addition to his or her other land.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 26” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

Want to See More?

Be sure to check out all of the landscape photography from my on-going Yankee Farmlands project.