“Pasture Tree and Fieldstone Wall, Autumn 2015”

During early December of 2015, I was preoccupied with incorporating a corn crib into an upcoming Yankee Farmlands installment. Corn cribs were historically used to store dried corn after a harvest, but they were rendered obsolete in the 50s and 60s by new harvesting machinery and relatively few remain in Connecticut. My research turned up some throughout the state, so I got to work. I’d sought out corn cribs in Killingworth and Granby and soon found myself in Brooklyn where a corn crib stands near the Golden Lamb Buttery at Hillandale Farms. Although the corn crib shots near Golden Lamb didn’t quite work out, before heading home I did make a stop elsewhere at the farm to compose a piece featuring this lone pasture tree and a fieldstone wall amidst some exquisite fog.

I was especially pleased with the photograph, but there was a problem. The previous Yankee Farmlands installment, № 46, had portrayed a foggy, leaf-bare peach orchard and I felt that the content and feel of this new piece was simply too similar for it to become № 47. Not to mention, I was thinking at that time that I might still return to Brooklyn to photograph that corn crib again. Since I had a goal of not using any farm more than once, I had to hold off on using this image just in case that corn crib was destined to become № 47 or № 48.

As it happened, I found a stand of corn cribs at Wade’s Farm in Bloomfield just a few days later which ended up becoming Yankee Farmlands № 47. With the first snows soon after, my goals for future installments shifted elsewhere and this piece simply missed its chance, but “Pasture Tree and Fieldstone Wall, Autumn 2015” is now finally given a voice in Late Harvest.