Tag: countryside

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

October & Tomatoes

Yankee Farmlands № 85 (Field of tomatoes, Cheshire, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 85”
Field of tomatoes, Cheshire, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

As dawn breaks over the Naugatuck Valley in early October, thousands of stakes still dot a rolling field of tomato plants and bear the weight of the season’s waning crop. Barns peer down over the land from atop the farm as woodlands beyond climb ever higher toward a cerulean sky daubed with airy clouds.

Although the English were experimenting in their gardens with an exotic fruit known as the tomato as early as the 1500s, it would be a long time before they grew popular. Perhaps because the plant’s blossoms bore resemblance to poisonous wildflowers known as deadly nightshades, the tomato was widely believed to be toxic.

In fact, tomatoes were unheard of in the British colonies of North America for quite some time, with the earliest record of their cultivation appearing in the Carolinas in the early 1700s. Despite some lingering suspicions of the plant in America, tomato recipes began emerging en masse during the early 19th century. By the mid-1800s, it seems that the fallacy of the poison tomato, honored as common knowledge for two centuries, had finally been put to rest.

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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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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 49” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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Be sure to check out all of the work from my Yankee Farmlands project, a journey throughout the countryside of Connecticut in celebration of New England’s agricultural heritage.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Silage and Watertown Farmlands

Yankee Farmlands № 40 (Farm and machinery, Watertown, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 40”
Forage harvester and dump wagon on hill beside barns, Watertown, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Amidst the gentle hills of Watertown in Western Connecticut, the warm light of morning strikes a distant complex of barns flanked by bales of hay bound in white plastic. Quietly stationed on the hill nearby is a dump wagon and forage harvester, machinery that finds use in the autumn months when acres of spent cornstalks are cut, chipped and stored for use as wintertime livestock feed.

Most of us are familiar with hay as a staple of farm animals; we’ve all seen the round or rectangular bundles of dried grasses. But livestock is also fed “silage”, which is produced by harvesting hay, grains or chopped cornstalks and quickly storing them in an air-tight environment to ferment. Farmers in the north use this silage to provide their livestock with moist, nutritious feed even during a frigid winter when the fields are frozen over.

Traditionally, fermented feed was produced by storing fresh-cut greens in tall silos (thus the term “silage”), but advances in durable plastics have largely made silos obsolete in modern times. Farmers now have machinery which can wrap individual hay bales in plastic, essentially creating small, self-contained silos that are easy to access and transport. Similar plastic is used to cover silage that can’t be baled, such as chipped cornstalks, which are collected in long heaps on the ground and tightly covered.

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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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New Print Releases The American Northeast

Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford

Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford (Goreham Bridge over Otter Creek, Pittsford & Proctor, Vermont)
“Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford”
Goreham Bridge over Otter Creek, Pittsford & Proctor, Vermont
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

As I stood upon a muddy riverbank during a warm spring morning in Vermont’s Rutland County, I watched reflections of the weathered Goreham Bridge ripple upon Otter Creek beneath a hazy sky streaked with broad, indistinct swaths of luminous blues. My piece, “Goreham’s Crossing at Pittsford”, emerged from that moment and brings together several elements which elaborate upon the sense of place wrapped up in this rustic riverscape in the Green Mountain State.

Built in 1842 and carrying traffic to this day, Goreham Bridge is one of four 19th-century covered bridges remaining in the rural town of Pittsford. That’s no small feat when you consider that the entire state of Connecticut has only three! But the town of Montgomery, about 100 miles north near the Canadian border, can justifiably be called Vermont’s “covered bridge capital”. Remarkably, seven covered bridges are scattered across the township’s 56 square miles.

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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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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Farewell Winter!

Yankee Farmlands № 25 (Glastonbury, Connecticut, USA)
“Yankee Farmlands № 25”
Glastonbury, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Springtime in the American Northeast was described perfectly by Pennsylvania-born author Henry van Dyke in 1899:

“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”

Judging by the stillness in the cold air and the snowpack lingering upon the barnyard of the Glastonbury farm in my new piece, “Yankee Farmlands № 25” (above), it would be tough to tell that a season of renewed warmth is upon us. Then again, fields that were covered a yard-deep in snow just a month ago have since thinned out to less than a foot and we’ve had some forgiving temperatures lately.

This much-awaited break in the winter weather is already presenting some fresh new shooting opportunities. Recent warm spells have melted substantial amounts of snow, causing brooks and rivers all over the state to swell. Waterfalls which have been snow-caked and encrusted with ice since January are finally awakening from their seasonal slumber. The woodlands and farmlands alike are still fairly dormant this early in the year, but as snow vanishes from road shoulders and trailhead parking lots, I’ve been delighted to find that I’ve finally got a place to park my truck again!

I’ve eased my cabin fever over these past couple months by putting together a new list of exciting shooting locations in Southern New England; I’m more than eager to get back out into a lively green landscape! So here’s to another long winter being behind us… and another glorious spring ahead!

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Click here to visit my the landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 25” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about rights-managed licensing for this image.

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Be sure to check out my Yankee Farmlands collection, the fruit of an on-going project which celebrates the agricultural heritage of the American Northeast through the breath-taking farmlands of Connecticut.