Tag: barn

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Making a New England Peach

Yankee Farmlands № 95 (Peach orchard during autumn, Guilford, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 95”
Peach orchard during autumn, Guilford, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Well into November, and with the surrounding forests already stripped bare by icy winds, an orchard of wizened peach trees clings valorously to its autumn trimmings. A mosaic of fallen leaves scattered upon the grasses beneath, however, signals the inescapable reality of the coming winter.

For those who understandably associate peaches with the forgiving climate of the American South, it might seem almost bizarre to find orchards of the fruit tree dotting the New England landscape from Connecticut to Maine. Indeed, peach trees weren’t well-suited to cold weather in the beginning, often being found in the Northeast only in small plantings or backyards, more as novelties than serious fixtures in the orchard.

It wasn’t until the late 1800s that New Englanders began seeking out resilient specimens and isolating genetic flukes to produce new cold-hardy varieties that would prove commercially viable in their neck of the woods. The trees still aren’t as resilient as the venerable apple and pear –crops are occasionally decimated across the region by brutal cold snaps– but the peach has nonetheless found a permanent and welcome home in orchards of New England.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

On the Origins of Memorial Day

Yankee Farmlands № 94 (Barn draped with the American flag, Stonington, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 94”
Barn draped with the American flag, Stonington, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Although memorial occasions for fallen soldiers had long existed in some form, it was on the heels of Civil War that hallowed days of remembrance arose with great frequency in communities across the American countryside. Known informally as Decoration Days, these ceremonies traditionally called for adorning the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers.

When the federal government sought to formalize and unify these assorted ceremonies in 1868, the date of May 30 was chosen. As for why that day was selected, some say it was because the date lacked any association with a specific battle, while others note that late May ensured a wealth of blooming flowers for decoration.

The holiday has endured many changes since those early days. “Memorial Day” gradually supplanted “Decoration Day” as the preferred name, the date was moved from the 30th to the last Monday in May and, of greatest importance, the graves of fallen soldiers have grown ever more numerous. What hasn’t changed is the significance and the sentiment which it embodies. And so, I leave you to the upcoming Memorial Day with the words of poet Kate Sherwood, penned in her 1885 work “Camp-fire, Memorial-day and Other Poems”:

Ah, not in anger, not in strife,
we come with laden hands ;
The crimson retinues of War
are off in other lands ;
We bring the blossoms we have nursed to
shed their honeyed breath
Where erst the reeling ranks of wrath
unbarred the gates of death ;
We lift the dear dead faces
of our heroes to the light,
We praise the pallid hands of theirs,
we clasp and hold them tight ;
We say: O brothers, rise and see
the Peace you helped to woo,
Whose snowy pinions hover o’er
the Red, the White, the Blue.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

The Broadleaf Harvest

"Yankee Farmlands № 87" (Tobacco shed in Windsor, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 87”
Windsor, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Beside radiant autumn forests flush with an October palette, shadows embrace a rickety old tobacco shed freshly divested of its cured crop. Bare tobacco stalks, having been stripped of their leaves, lay piled upon a trailer ready to be carted away.

“Connecticut broadleaf tobacco is the Dangerfield of the cigar industry, a rumpled everyman tobacco that gets little respect,” wrote one journalist, kicking off a piece in a Cigar Aficionado magazine. And there’s truth to that assessment: broadleaf lives in the proverbial shadow of world-famous Connecticut shade tobacco, the two varieties forever vying for turf in the same fertile soils of the Connecticut Valley.

But while Connecticut broadleaf may not enjoy the same mystique as its shade-grown counterpart, its bold taste –described as a “heavy, muscular flavor” in the same Aficionado article– nonetheless earns it a spot in everything from machine-made Backwoods cigars to premium, hand-crafted maduros.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Empty Barns & Fields of Daisies

Yankee Farmlands № 68 (Tobacco sheds & wildflowers, Windsor, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 68”
Tobacco sheds & wildflowers, Windsor, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Beside creaky, derelict tobacco sheds besieged by prying vines, a brilliant mosaic of ox-eye daises, cow vetch, wheat and field grasses blankets an overgrown field in Central Connecticut’s waning Tobacco Valley.

By the mid-1800s, Connecticut had reached its peak level of deforestation in human history. As much as 70% to 80% of the state had been clear-cut, with a good deal of that acreage ultimately finding use as pastures, hayfields and croplands. But agriculture began a steady a decline from that point forward. Enormous swaths of farmland were abandoned as folks sought work in flourishing industrial cities or headed out west in search of new opportunities. Many towns throughout Connecticut had lost half of their population before 1900.

It’s no surprise that scenes such as this one, with fields and pastures growing wild and barns left to decay, would have been a familiar sight to folks living in Southern New England during the latter half of the 1800s. Most all of Connecticut’s modern forests, which now cover more than half the state, grew upon the deserted soil of those long-vanished farms.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

The Decline of the Silo

Yankee Farmlands № 67 (Farm in Bethany, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 67”
Bethany, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Virginia creeper and poison ivy climb in tangles, competing over a weathered fence post at the corner of a quiet barnyard in the south of Connecticut. Barns in the distance flank a towering concrete stave silo, likely retired from use years ago but still faithfully standing sentinel over the farm.

Silos are undoubtedly among the visual staples of farm country, but they are quickly approaching the end of their era. These unmistakable towers rose to popularity in the late 1800s as a means of preserving nutritious livestock feed for use during colder months. By the 1920s, nearly a half-million silos dotted the dairy regions of the United States.

But the purpose of the silo was to keep feed in an air-tight environment, a task accomplished far more easily these days by simply covering bunkers or feed piles in long lengths of plastic sheeting. Indeed, modern plastics have made farm life quite a bit easier, all the while tolling the death knell for the classic silo. Most of the silos that you see these days aren’t used any longer; they’ve been empty for years, in fact. Even those increasingly rare farmers who still use their silos admit that they can’t imagine ever building any new ones once the old ones are worn out and retired. It’s quite probable that within a century, the once ubiquitous silo may all but vanish from the countryside.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Winter’s Final Days in the Countryside

Yankee Farmlands № 59 (Old plows beside ornate round-roof barn, Colchester, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 59”
Old plows beside ornate round-roof barn
Colchester, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

With spring having arrived just about a week ago, it’s about that time for my on-going Yankee Farmlands project to make the change, as well! Next week’s addition to the series will be the first springtime farmland imagery this year. In the meantime though, I’ve released two final pieces from the very tail-end of winter.

In “Yankee Farmlands № 59” (at top), antique plows rest silently beside an elaborate, round-roof barn in Eastern Connecticut. With winter drawing to a close, the snows have melted away and soft clouds soar through the blue skies overhead.

If you were to briefly glance at this barn and expansive farm while driving by, it might be difficult to tell that it’s no longer an ordinary commercial operation. Roughly 16 years ago, the last of the previous owners donated the 170-acre farm –barns, machinery and all– for use as a unique “farm museum” where visitors can observe a broad range of both historical and modern farming equipment in use.

Yankee Farmlands № 58 (Snowy farm and hay wagons, Bethlehem, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 58”
Snowy farm and hay wagons
Bethlehem, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

“Yankee Farmlands № 58” (immediately above) captures one of winter’s final blows to the Connecticut landscape. Tractor tracks impressed in frozen mud guide us past wagons and wrapped hay bales into a snowy expanse of farmland in Western Connecticut.

For all of the advancements in mechanization that have revolutionized farming over the centuries, the typical hay wagon has actually changed very little. After all, they are basically just cargo trailers for hauling hay… there’s only so much room for innovation beyond improving materials. If you could drop farmers from the early-1800s into a modern farm, machines like tractors, disc plows and balers would be completely foreign to them. Hay wagons might be among the few pieces of heavy equipment that they’d recognize fairly easily.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

On the Outskirts of Bristol

Yankee Farmlands № 49 (Farm in Bristol, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 49”
Barn and farmland in Bristol, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Clouds glow like airy jewels in the early morning as they drift over a dormant farm on the outskirts of Bristol. Down below, light snow clings to a dirt access road which winds past hay bales and a bare shade tree before vanishing behind the barn.

The last installment of Yankee Farmlands brought us to Colebrook, a rural town which was largely reclaimed by sprawling woodlands as farming declined throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Bristol represents the opposite case: as old farmland there was abandoned, it was rapidly repurposed for city expansion and residences. So while Colebrook and Bristol encompass roughly the same amount of land, the population of Bristol has swelled to be about 40 times greater!

Remarkably, a handful of farms have endured on the periphery of the city and manage to feel a world apart from the nearby suburbs and the bustling streets less than two miles to the south.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Remembering Pastoral Colebrook

Yankee Farmlands № 48 (Old Hale Farm, Colebrook, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 48”
Old Hale Farm, Colebrook, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

When author John Barber wrote of Colebrook in the 1830s, he described the land as “hilly and mountainous”, the soil as “generally stony” and the climate as “rather cold and wet”. It would be difficult to paint a bleaker picture of this village in Connecticut’s Northwest Hills. As if he felt obligated to offer at least one redeeming quality, Barber conceded that it “affords tolerable… grazing.”

In truth, Colebrook proved to be a productive area of the state for dairy farming, even if agriculture mostly vanished from its hills over the last century. Unlike many of Connecticut’s towns, which became densely populated with suburbs after farming declined, Colebrook’s abandoned pastures and hayfields were largely covered over by expansive forests. Today, less than 1,500 people make their home among its 30 square miles of remote woodlands. This barn, built in the late 1700s, and the surrounding pastureland is preserved by a local land trust and stands as something of a memorial to generations of hard-scrabble farmers that settled Colebrook long ago.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

The Advent of the Barn Cupola

Yankee Farmlands № 43 (Barn with ornate cupola, Avon, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 43”
Barn with ornate cupola, Avon, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Long shadows reach across the landscape as the sun sits low upon the horizon in Connecticut’s Farmington Valley. Nestled among the shadows and vivid foliage of shade trees, a barn hoists its tall weather vane into the air atop a stately cupola.

For the first two centuries after European settlement, farmers in New England sided their barns with a single layer of long boards. This kept out rain and snow, but the narrow gaps between each board meant that the barn interior was still rather drafty. Livestock housed within needed to eat plenty of food in order to stay warm in spite of the chills. So, in the spirit of efficiency, 19th-century farmers began trying to seal the sides of their barns with shingles or additional boards, letting in less cold air so that livestock would consume less feed in the wintertime.

It worked, but there was one glaring problem: those gaps had served as much-needed barn ventilation. Without any air circulation, manure fumes grew overwhelming and the excess humidity caused rampant mold growth. Simple cupolas solved the problem, venting stale, damp air through the roof. By the late 1800s, intricate cupola designs emerged which were just as beautiful as they were functional.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

The Beauty and the Hardship

Yankee Farmlands № 39 (Wolcott, Connecticut, USA)
“Yankee Farmlands № 39”
Barn and pastureland at dawn, Wolcott, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

In my latest piece, “Yankee Farmlands № 39”, dawn breaks over weathered barns beside a chilly pasture where dew-speckled grasses shimmer like a verdant, green sea.

In an era such as ours, when most of us are no longer tethered to our land for crops and livestock, it’s understandable that farming would be romanticized to some degree. An intimate relationship with the soil, bucking cubicles and corporate bureaucracy: sounds great, right?

There are myriad things that can be said in praise of the farming life, but the labor is often hard, the money is sometimes uncertain and the work can be quite dangerous. Consider the bitter case of the Rufus Norton Farm, which is seen in this piece. “Rufus was killed in the 1930’s by one of his bulls,” recalled a Wolcott historian. “His wife kept the farm going by working as a school bus driver.”

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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

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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