Tag: farm

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Further into Yankee Farmlands

Highland Cow (Roxbury, Connecticut)
“Highland Cow, 2015”
Roxbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

If you follow the work that I release each week, you’ve surely noticed regular installments of my Yankee Farmlands project, essentially an on-going photographic celebration of Connecticut’s agricultural heritage.

I released the first photograph in the series, “Yankee Farmlands № 1”, about 1½ years ago in September of 2014. Later this week, I’ll be rolling out “Yankee Farmlands № 58”. Suffice it to say that this has been a long and enjoyable endeavor and I’m certainly not done yet!

What you may not know is that I end up producing far more work during my travels than I can possibly fit into the formal project series. So, I’ve resolved to release some of these pieces from time to time. I produced this “portrait” at a hilly pasture in Roxbury where I discovered a herd of shaggy Highland Cattle idly grazing away during the final days of autumn last year.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

A Sweet Harvest

Yankee Farmlands № 57 (Tapped maple tree beside farm, New Hartford, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 57”
Tapped maple tree beside farm, New Hartford, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Against a bucolic backdrop of barns, pastureland and leafless forest, a tapped maple tree at the edge of the farm silently siphons sap into a collection bucket. Delicate clouds glide through blue skies overhead, heralding the arrival of milder weather as spring nears.

While we can’t say for certain when Native Americans living in the northeastern reaches of North America discovered the wonders of maple sap, the practice of collecting and boiling the sap down to a sweet, condensed liquid was already well-established when settlers arrived from Europe in the 1600s.

Although Canada now supplies most of the world’s maple syrup, New England remains the top-producing region in the United States. Vermont alone generates well over a million gallons each year, amounting to more than 5% of the world supply.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 57” to buy a beautiful fine art print or inquire about licensing this image.

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

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

An Orchard Older than the Nation

Yankee Farmlands № 54 (Apple orchard, Middlefield, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 54”
Apple orchard at sunset, Middlefield, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Rolling hills bristling with apple trees are immersed in shadow as sunlight gently begins to slip from the Connecticut Valley. Snows from a recent storm cling stubbornly to a nearby hillside and the sky is smudged with swirling color as clouds drift overhead.

For a few reasons which I won’t discuss right now, I’ve generally refrained from naming the specific farms that are seen in my Yankee Farmlands project. But Lyman Orchards, which encompasses the apple trees seen in this piece and more than 1,000 surrounding acres, is truly deserving of some special attention.

This orchard is so old, it actually predates the United States. That’s right: it began on a modest 32 acres back in 1741, decades before the American Revolution. As if that alone isn’t fairly impressive, consider that the 275-year-old Lyman Orchards has been owned and operated by the Lyman Family since the very beginning. Today’s eighth-generation owners are hopeful that a ninth-generation of Lymans will step forward to continue this remarkable legacy well into the 21st century.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 54” 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

Snows Fall over West Simsbury

Yankee Farmlands № 53 (Simsbury, Connecticut, USA)
“Yankee Farmlands № 53”
February snowstorm descends upon windswept farmlands
Simsbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Winter snows descend upon the farmlands of Northern Connecticut, blanketing hay wagons and a time-worn pasture shelter. Bare shade trees dot the landscape beyond, eventually giving way to the hazy silhouette of distant woodlands.

At first glance, snow-laden farms may seem rather dormant: tractors sit parked, fields lay barren and barns slumber away the winter. But historically, tireless New Englanders found ways to keep busy on the farm even during the colder months of the year.

With no fields to tend, farmers set off into their woodlots to fell trees which would eventually be used in the springtime to build and repair barns, fences and sheds. Seems like a terrible time for such strenuous outdoor labor, right? Maybe so, but there was an important advantage to this approach: it was far easier to haul heavy timber back to the farm on a sled over the snow than it would be to overload the frame and wheels of a creaky, old wooden cart in the summertime.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 53” 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 in my on-going Yankee Farmlands project, a journey throughout Connecticut’s countryside in celebration of the agricultural heritage of New England.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Winter in Tobacco Valley

Yankee Farmlands № 52 (Shade tobacco farm, Windsor, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 52”
Shade tobacco farm and curing shed, Windsor, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

The moon crests over drifting clouds as night falls on a frigid tobacco farm in the Connecticut Valley. Dormant fields, still months from being planted in the spring, spread far beyond a nearby curing shed clad in worn, mismatched boards.

The town of Windsor, which flanks the western side of the Connecticut River in the northern reaches of the state, represents a particularly unique blend of rural and developed landscapes. Turn the clock back about a century and you would find the area covered over with vast tobacco fields stretching to the horizon in every direction. Once the tobacco market began to steadily decline after the early 1900s, farmers gradually sold off large swaths of surplus cropland.

This gradual shift in land use has resulted in remaining tobacco farms being tightly intermingled with busy roads, corporate office parks and neighborhoods, maintaining an unmistakable presence in the community and hearkening back to earlier days.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 52” 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 ‘neath Talcott

Fields 'neath Talcott (Talcott Mountain and Hublein Tower, Simsbury, CT)
“Fields ‘neath Talcott”
Talcott Mountain (& Hublein Tower) beyond corn field, Simsbury, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

In my latest release, “Fields ‘neath Talcott” (above), long shadows cast from surrounding woodlands reach across rows of corn as the sun sinks low in the sky, signaling the conclusion of a balmy, autumn day. On the horizon, Talcott Mountain rises nearly 1,000 feet from the surrounding countryside; the iconic Hublein Tower crowns the ridge crest, an unmistakable fleck against bold clouds, forest and traprock cliffs.

In 1823, Encyclopedia Britannica summed up Connecticut as “generally broken land made up of mountains, hills and valleys”. Among the rugged features of this landscape is the Metacomet Range, a distinctive chain of long, sheer ridges that weave through the Connecticut Valley.

Talcott Mountain is just one of many prominent summits of the Metacomet Range, which begins near the Connecticut coast and traces a rocky path north for 100 miles up into northern Massachusetts. Some of the more colorfully named mountains in Connecticut’s length of the chain include Sleeping Giant in Hamden and Wallingford, Meriden’s Hanging Hills and the Barndoor Hills in Granby.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Winter on the Farms of Enfield

Yankee Farmlands № 50 (Snow on Corn Field, Enfield, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 50”
Snow-covered Corn Field, Enfield, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

Cast from the lustrous, hazy sky above, sunlight floods a frigid, snow-laden field in the Connecticut River Valley and throws long shadows from the stubble of last season’s corn stalks.

Although modern-day Enfield lies in the northernmost reaches of Connecticut on the east side of the Connecticut River, that wasn’t always the case. An early survey conducted in 1642, just as colonists were beginning to gain a foothold in New England, determined that Enfield was part of the neighboring Massachusetts Colony.

More than five decades later in 1695, a new survey determined that the old boundary between Massachusetts and Connecticut was entirely incorrect. Enfield and a handful of other towns, which had been part of Massachusetts for two generations, were actually part of Connecticut! Things moved slowly in those early days, though: it would take another 50 years before Enfield managed to officially secede from Massachusetts and join the Connecticut Colony in 1750.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 50” 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 of my on-going Yankee Farmlands project, a journey throughout Connecticut’s farmlands in celebration of the agricultural heritage of New England.

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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

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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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 48” 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

Corn Cribs and… Broccoli?

Yankee Farmlands № 47 (Old Corn Cribs beside broccoli field, Bloomfield, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 47”
Old corn cribs beside broccoli field, Bloomfield, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Rows of broccoli wave flowery, yellow crowns beneath a December sky marbled with sunset clouds. Atop the nearby hill, an aging flat-bed farm truck sits parked amidst the wiry frames of vacant corn cribs.

Store-bought broccoli is actually clusters of flower buds that are cut from the plant just before they begin to bloom. If the buds were left alone, they would burst into bouquets of tiny, yellow flowers. The broccoli plants seen here were probably harvested in mid-autumn; residual flower stalks began blooming in November and December thanks to unseasonably warm weather.

The corn cribs on the horizon are wire-mesh towers in which the farmer could air-dry corn on the cob for use as livestock feed (back when corn was grown in this field instead of broccoli). Although corn cribs of various designs were once widely-used, they became rather obsolete after the mid-1900s when advances in equipment made air-drying unnecessary. Relatively few corn cribs remain in Connecticut these days and clusters of this particular design are quite rare.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 47” 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 on-going Yankee Farmlands project, a journey throughout Connecticut’s countryside in celebration of New England’s agricultural heritage.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Orchard in the Mist

Yankee Farmlands № 46 (Peach orchard, Southington, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 46”
Peach orchard in the fog, Southington, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Heavy fog engulfs the orchards of Central Connecticut during a curious warm streak in mid-December. Rows of slumbering peach trees recede into the distance, eventually rendered in silhouette with pines and bare hardwoods at the grove’s edge.

Peaches were introduced by European settlers throughout much of the Mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies in the New World as early as the 1600s. “In fact,” recalled one 19th-century author,“ peaches were growing so widely in eastern North America by the time of the American Revolution that many assumed the fruit to be an American native.”

New England was a bit slower to truly embrace the peach, instead relying heavily upon apple and pear trees which could better tolerate the harsh northern climate. While scatterings of peach trees may have been planted here or there for a century or more prior, commercial-scale peach orchards in Connecticut didn’t emerge until the early 1900s.

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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Sunset on the Christmas Trees

Yankee Farmlands № 45 (Christmas tree farm, Ellington, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 45”
Christmas tree farm, Ellington, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Cold winds of December rake through acres of Christmas trees and howl as they reach the distant woodlands. Across the countryside, the setting sun casts rich, molten light which imparts the illusion of warmth in a land that aches for snow.

The custom of decorating Christmas trees was originally brought to North America by German settlers in the 1700s, but didn’t really begin catching on until the mid-1800s. By 1901, the first Christmas tree farm in the USA was established, though it was a rarity in its day. In fact, nine out of every ten Christmas trees were cut from forests right up until the 50s. That changed dramatically over the past several decades as tree plantations rapidly expanded; now almost all Christmas trees are farm-grown.

Many different evergreens such as firs, spruces and pines may be cultivated for use as Christmas trees and an 8-foot specimen generally grows in 6 to 10 years. Farmers oftentimes plant new trees every year or two, ensuring that a new generation is reaching maturity every December. The trees seen on this plantation are of mixed heights –between 2 to 4 feet– so it will likely be another couple years before any of them are ready to be harvested and decorated.

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Click here to visit my landing page for “Yankee Farmlands № 45” 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 work from my on-going Yankee Farmlands project, a journey through Connecticut’s magnificent countryside in celebration of New England’s agricultural heritage.