Tag: farmland

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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

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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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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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

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

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

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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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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All Things Connecticut New Print Releases The American Northeast

Giant Sunflowers of Griswold

Yankee Farmlands № 34 (Field of giant sunflowers in Connecticut’s “Quiet Corner”, Griswold, Connecticut)
“Yankee Farmlands № 34”
Field of giant sunflowers in Connecticut’s “Quiet Corner”, Griswold, Connecticut
© 2015 J. G. Coleman

Giant sunflowers crowd a verdant field in Connecticut’s Eastern Uplands as sprawling clouds drift across the summertime sky. The vista featured in “Yankee Farmlands No. 34” (above) is the latest installment in my project which celebrates the agricultural heritage of Southern New England through Connecticut’s scenic farmlands.

Among North America’s ancient food crops, the sunflower was widely cultivated by Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before Spanish explorers first laid eyes on the plant in the 1500s. Specimens were brought back home to Spain and, from there, spread throughout Europe.

Russia can be credited with breeding the gargantuan sunflowers with which we are familiar today. But while sunflowers had grown popular in Europe, they had fallen out of vogue as crops in North America. So even though sunflowers began their journey as food crops thousands of years ago in the Americas, the modern practice of farming them in the United States didn’t really take off until Russia shipped their huge sunflowers overseas in the late 1800s.

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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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