Invasives

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:
  

Moment

Peepers and grippers, 

creepers and crawlers, 

overtakers and undertakers. 

Pond Prelude & Fugue

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL "Adagio": I've come this way often and never failed to admire the skeleton of this old giant, stretched out from the foot of the ice pond. It's leafless arms suggest a rib cage of Mesozoic heft. It is a rigid brace against galling winds. I've carefully walked the plank of its supine trunk as far out into the pond as I dared and clutched its broken limbs to stay my balance. I've jumped tenuously and found it will not dance or bob. I've even listened to the wind and tried to imagine the sound of those leaves that once blew so hard the branches nearly broke before the great tree fell. And afterward I wondered which was more fantastic, the fury of that rage and fall or the long quiet after?

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Like a forgotten continent its still cliffs slip into the surrounding pond. Off shore periscopic frogs keep watch to snatch a hapless midge or bluebottle with their whiplash tongues, and where the trunk rises highest, three turtles sunbathe, alert and ready, despite their long climb, to take a turtle-leap to the bottom of the pond. In a large bay scooped out by skeletal forearms, water bugs dart. They are the last of the season. In a shadowed harbor lurking perch have already begun to feel the water change.

Bog Hollow Farm Prelude, Allegro, & Fugue

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The old farm road descends from high fields which still through spring and summer yield a bit of seedy hay. Below, in incomplete exhaustion Loughlin Farm waits. At intervals I pause, and my camera reaches unsuccessfully for the fury of the still un-distilled reflection in the un-stilled pond and the ragged remnants of the barns.

The Old Barn at Mill Brook Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

Scents of the Past

Three photographs 

tacked to piquant chestnut

recall a party 

long since over. 

In an apple crate,

hand-lettered decorations 

name the forgotten event 

and the date. 

Then It smelled 

of loud music, 

hot casserole, 

sweet sweat dabbed discreetly. 

Before, for two hundred years

no party could dislodge 

the perfume of ripe apples 

and ripe sweat.

And earlier still, a prehistory 

of forgotten tales 

and tails 

and their particular aromas.  

Edgily hollow,

restively quiet, 

a great space eager 

to move beyond apples. 

Timeline at Meadow Brook Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - This timeline of barns parallels the street but hides its Victorian jewelry and tries to avoid being photographed. I struggled to try to guess initial purposes and ages. When I'm led to photograph a barnstead like this it's hard not to be captivated by the thing, but then I will make nothing but photographic documents. The photograph to be made at Meadow Brook Farm in mid August was a composition of pleasing textures and colors, nothing more and nothing less.

Convocation at Meadow Brook Farm

JENS JENSEN: "Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company. Only a few love to be alone.."

Waltzing Autumn

BILL VAUGHN: "Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the street after them."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I made a point of getting back to Red Hook to catch Meadow Brook Farm as the season changed.

A Place to Swing

They resign themselves to slopes beneath and 

slowly embrace the earth. 

They rotate the sky above their heads and 

mark each year with a ring. 

They bend with the wind, change garments with the seasons, and 

strive to reach the sun. 

Beneath their canopies are places to dally,  but 

trees are time's watchmen. 

How many lifetimes have these ancient maples and these old barns been 

dancing here?

Barn and Welkin

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The footsteps of the past resonate a bit more loudly at Meadow Brook Farm, though the barns are empty. The Teeter family acquired this land in 1754 and farmed it for nearly 200 years. Even before I learned anything about its history the building felt venerable. The massive timbers that span the central bay come from trees that may have been 200 years old in the 18th century when they were felled to build this. They are big bones, and I felt a business-like sense of purpose about the place. It had been storage for the farm's orchard, and I could imagine that wagons and a crew of men might arrive at any moment and begin unloading crates of apples, the first of the season.

Here is a bit of history that was sent to me by the current owner:

In 2004, internationally-renowned timberman, Jim Kricker and Peter Sinclair, Editor of the Hudson Vernacular Architecture Newsletter visited the farm, identifying and dating the historic structures on the property.   The oldest barn on the farm was originally of Dutch design, (constructed in the early 1700s), one of ten Dutch barns registered in Red Hook. Roman numeral markings, used in pre-revolutionary times, show where structural beams were married.  This barn had bays for housing horses and cows, and a center section for storing a carriage.  At some point the barn was added on to, the roof was raised and it was moved over a full basement to handle the later orchard.

An English side-entrance barn with a two-story carriage house also graces the property along with a stone summer kitchen with a bees-hive oven, (dating back to the 1700s), and an ice house that was later converted into a stable and a workshop.

Up on the hill behind the barns most of the old orchards are gone, and the old workers quarters are in ruins, and further off some of the land has become subdivisions.

The current owner is looking to sell the property to someone who will respect and maintain its historic integrity.  Many thanks to my former college roommate who led me to this ancient farmstead.

Tobacco Road

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Even if one can't identify tobacco plants as they are growing, the long, low, louvered sheds used for drying the leaves are distinctive. The technology used to make Connecticut's fine cigar binders and wrappers has been much the same for 200 years. It is labor intensive, and as we photographed here, crews of laborers showed off the hatchets with which they cut the tobacco stalks. In order to make the best wrappers, for much of the season the plants must be covered by cloth tents which are removed for harvesting.

Native Americans were smoking tobacco when the first settlers arrived from Europe. By the 1630s the settlers were already making a profit exporting tobacco back to Europe. The soil and climate of the Connecticut River Valley proved to be perfect for growing the high quality leaves needed for the binders and wrappers. Tobacco has always been an engine of the river valley economy, and it has served as an entry point for waves of immigrants.

Even though the popularity of cigar smoking has fallen, Connecticut's tobacco industry remains a significant part of the state economy.

Tobacco Curing

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - In the early 1970s I began driving across Connecticut regularly along Interstate 84. Shortly after crossing the Connecticut River heading east, I-84 passed through a vast territory of open flat fields planted with green rows of tobacco beside rows of wooden tobacco sheds where the leaves were cured. My great grandfather was a cigar maker in Hartford at the end of the 19th century, and Connecticut was famous for its tobacco leaves which were used primarily as wrappers for cigars. Back then tobacco was even farmed, though on a smaller scale, in the Northwest Hills where I now live, and you can spot the old tobacco barns by the louvered flap vents that betray their tobacco curing history.

The tobacco fields along I-84 were already disappearing by the mid 1970s, and today the region is filled with strip malls and warehouses for big box stores, and it's probably been almost 100 years since tobacco was farmed in the northwest hills. One can still find tobacco farming, however, along the Connecticut River as one reaches the northern part of the state and passes into Massachusetts. That's where this photograph was taken in late August as the new crop was being harvested and cured.


NOTE: With the previous posting, "Today's Photo" entered its fifth year. This is the 686th photograph to be added to this blog.

Hay Palace

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - Slowly the old dairy farms fall silent. Many of them then simply fall. Every dairy farmer talks about how hard it is to turn a profit, but as the dairy farms disappear, many find new life as horse farms. From the outside this hay barn looks like the old dairy barns on steroids. Nearby the owner is restoring the old barns, but this new barn dwarfs them.

Cows are always grazing, always processing food in their four stomachs. Horses thrive on a more finely tuned feed, they are choosier, and the horses that will be raised on this new farm have the finest building on the property as their pantry.

Sometimes the things that balance a shot and make it work are deceptively simple. I returned when the hay wagon was moved and more hay had been added on the left, and there was no shot at all.

A Rite of Spring

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: What ancient rite of the seasons is conducted here? Is it some cult that will soon fill this space? It is May 30th. Below cows are being milked, but in early spring this hayloft is empty. Soon the first haying will begin.

If the barn has silos, it's a pretty good guess it was at one time a dairy farm, but having silage did not replace the need for large haylofts. Before the time of silos hay got the cows through the winter, but cow's milk was a seasonal delicacy. My correspondent explains the importance of silage and its relation to hay:

In early farming days before silage, hay and dried grain was the sole means of keeping cattle through winter and off months when there was no green grass. The cattle still produced milk but not very much in comparison to cattle in modern times.  Then when silos were conceived of for storage of a "green grass" supplement, to feed during this "off season," milk production surged. Here you had a green forage along with the grain corn all in one.  Hay was still fed as a bulk food source but it was the green silage that really allowed the cows to produce milk in the off season.  During spring, summer and fall of course, cattle pastured day and night except for milking time. Nutritionally rich green forage produces milk.

Cattle were bred to "freshen" in the fall to provide for peak production when milk prices were at their highest. Corn silage from silos simply prolonged the green forage period.  Much later in the farming era, grass silage was started with almost as good results.  There are many reasons why some farmers converted to grass silage while others stuck with corn (soil type, land drainage, equipment, etc.)   Normally it was the goal of each farmer to put up enough silage to last until spring grass.

This farm still remains active, but once there were many more farms nearby. Sheffield Dairy bought milk from the local farmers and an active rail line carried it to New York City where demand for fresh milk was always high. The old rail line still runs near here, but the tracks are gone; now it is only used for bicycling.

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Silo Light

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Much later in the summer (1:17 PM on August 28) my friend Lazlo and I climbed into this abandoned, concrete silo containing nothing but lovely astral light and the sun's beam marking the hours of the day, a holy place. When in use, grain or chopped vegetable material was blown up a pipe running along the outside of the silo, poking through the dome and shown here, top right. By the end of the summer this silo would have been full.

In the previous TODAY'S we climbed a metal Harvestore silo, but the silos pictured in the shot are similar to this one. Harvestores are unloaded mechanically from the bottom, but silos like this were unloaded by hand. One subscriber wrote to me recollecting the process,

You have to remember also that before the days of the automated silo unloaders,  farmers had to climb these things twice a day and fork out silage by hand.  Up and down the slippery rungs of the enclosed chute and ladder.  If you didn't concentrate on every hand and foothold, it was simply a freefall to the cement pad at the bottom.  Its too bad they couldn't have developed a trench silo system first.  But then imagine photos of farms without silos.

The farmer who emptied this silo would have used a silage rake (or silage fork) which looked much like a pitch fork but with probably twelve tines set close together. Whatever the nature of the silo, the purpose was to preserve high quality feed through fermentation. A good silo needed to be close to airtight. Being inside it must have been a heady experience.

Although silos like this one are still commonly seen in farm country, very few are still in use. Harvestore silos which provide a much better seal against air and include mechanical unloading are still used at a few farms, but today most silage is made in trenches and loaded and emptied with tractors.

Silo View

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This photograph was shot from the tallest silo in the previous TODAY'S posting. I first saw a photograph similar to this in a book about Hudson Valley farms. When the owner of the farm invited me to climb the silo I knew I'd have to do it even though the thought was a bit frightening. I didn't make my first climb to the top until late August of 2009, without a camera just to see what it was like.

It was hard work. I went cautiously and rested every ten or fifteen feet. I focused closely on each wrung and, as I grasped the next, ignored that it was coated in dried dung from the boots of those who had climbed before me. I could feel my adrenaline pumping as I stepped onto the wire platform at the top. The railing looked flimsy, the wind was blowing, and I was on top of the tallest silo on Winchell Mountain.

The trip down was no easier. On the way up one looks forward, but each step down is taken into faith. The ladder is attached to the side of the silo inside a metal guard rail. Ladder and rail stop ten or fifteen feet above the ground. The remaining gap is crossed by an old, bent, iron ladder that hooks precariously from the bottom of the guard rail and is not anchored at the bottom; with each step it moves. When I reached the ground I took a deep breath and rested.

Half an hour later I made a second climb, this time with camera. I took a series of pictures from the top, but as is often the case, they were preliminary shots.

I returned again this spring. I had learned that the light was best in long shadows of early morning, and in early spring the pattern of corn rows would be crisp. I also knew that twice a day the cows filed from the feeding area to the milking barn and back. A shot might be most interesting if the cows were shuffling one way or the other. I asked what time the morning milkings occurred.

Whiteout on Winchell Mountain

To all my friends who follow the photos and writings on TODAY'S PHOTO, a very happy holiday, and to those who sometimes write with comments, observations, or asides, your periodic communications are especially appreciated. Thank you.

Invitation to the Underdocks

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: So many times the underdocks have drawn my eye to where reflected pilings open another world, a place of shimmering darkness, passageways, snails, barnacles, ropes and chains that dip and drip beneath the gleaming harbor's surface. Night in the underdocks brings a different world, a place of silent iridescence. Whither this stairway while Bass Harbor sleeps, my last shot before leaving the herring dock?

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:


Photographer at Dusk

Out on the wharf the sun was almost gone,
The lobster boats were flat, no window fire,
The wordless earth was turning into stone,
And farther out one anchored sailboat waited
To catch the wind wrinkling another day.
Moods flicker and pass,
I reached to catch it
Even as it washed out to sea.

Herring Warehouses, No.7

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I reached the main shed of the complex as the sun was setting. Had it been a perfect shooting night? I guessed so, but my calling had been inside. Outside the low light caught the windows of lobster boats anchored for the night, and across Bass Harbor the town of Bernard was already in shadow. From the end of the wharf (in front of me here) most of my shots would be into the bright sun, challenging if not impossible to shoot, but the truth was I was almost done here, and the challenge of the light was appealing.


P.S. It's not too late to take advantage of Blurb's 20% discount on either Best of Today's: 2009 or Farm. You'll have to register as a Blurb member, add my book to your cart, and then enter the code, BLURBDISCOUNT, in all caps when asked.

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Herring Warehouses, No.6

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: What is it that lures me into this labyrinthine network of shacks? What makes it a fit subject for photography? Can a single photo tell the story, or does the story consist of the journey and the sensations it initiates and moments of feeling lost in an alien world? In order for me to have lobster on my plate in Connecticut, such places in Maine must exist - so many dark passages, so many rooms constantly being resupplied with herring, so many barrels and drums and a sea of salted herring waiting to be cut and stuffed in bait pockets to lure voracious crustaceans from hiding.

Traditions of coastal life live here and have flowed along these currents for 200 years, and the men who work here today are of the same families. It seems an odd discord, this world bumping against a culture that has grown transient, even i-Mobile, maybe rootless absent-minded with regard to the life of the planet. It is not only vacationers. Lobstermen with pickups and lobster boats, and now sometimes email and web sites, linger on Facebook, tweet and continuing the work of their grandparents, managing their resources. Or is the odd thing how rare the generational continuity has become elsewhere?

For many years I shot on the docks in Bass Harbor, barely looking inside the odd collection of shacks. Before I began working with HDR there was no point. I don't shoot with artificial light, and what interests me are the lurking shadows of this time-haunted place that is still part of yesterday and fits oddly with tomorrow.

Herring Warehouses, No.5

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:


Shadow Dance

I retreat further in.

Passages turn
intersect,
hop
building to building.
Each breach
is a fissure of slime
where one hears the tidewater's
angry slap,
and things of the underdock
and their tidal minions
rise and creep,
scamper and leap,
noiselessly rock
in furtive contemplations.

Herring Warehouses, No.4

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:


Submerged

Vats of herring
deep in salt
swell and bubble,
foam and flow.
Herring in shoals
dart, shining
through my inner ear
coil round my spine,
realities dark dream,
'til the weir breaks,
and flickering herring swirl
toward the outer harbor
engulfing me in brine.

Herring Warehouses, No.3

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Assaulted Herring

Miasma of fetid herring
defiles darkness,
walls I dare not touch,
and the slimy air I try to breathe,
lobsters' ambrosial temptation,
for me smothering vertigo.

Herring Warehouses, No.2

VIEWING NOTE: Images such as this are best viewed against a very dark or black screen background. If you can't see detail in the very first floor board at the bottom of the screen, then you're not seeing all of the detail that is in the image.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Herring Shack Passage

To anyone else, a noxious place,
to the grunge-seeking photographer,
an arcade of mysteries.
Who shares my noisome shadows?
From what corners do their red eyes shine?
I advance into dim light, and
the passage swells to a gallery.

Cracks and breaches
illuminate raw wood,
the aroma ripens,
panels scratched and bespattered are lit and ready to be deciphered.
What sculptured idols does each new gallery hold?
What incantations scar the ancient wood?
What dark magic might not thrive here?

NOTE: Once again ONE New England is featuring one of my photos on the front cover.  This is a great online mag for those interested in what's what around New England.  http://www.onenewengland.com/

BOOK DISCOUNT:

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Herring Warehouses, No.1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The herring warehouses in Bass Harbor, where lobstermen store their bait, are a huddle of old sheds, shoulder to shoulder, sitting atop piers and leaning far out into the harbor. One may wind ones way in the open air among lobster traps out to the end of the wharf. Enter one of the passageways leading into the buildings, and be prepared to be assaulted by darkness and the stench of salted herring. It takes a few moments to adjust to the dim light in the long, narrow passage, and I walk slowly until I reach a junction where rooms and other dark passages diverge.

BOOK DISCOUNT:

If you've been considering ordering one of my books, now is a good time to do it. Order before December 31, and Blurb will give a 20% discount off the book's cost.  You'll have to register as a Blurb member, add my book to your cart, and then enter the code, BLURBDISCOUNT, in all caps when asked.  Remember, the discount expires at the end of the year.  Use the links below to view and order.

MY BOOKSTORE ON BLURB:  http://www.blurb.com/user/store/erothii

Des Wanderers Weg

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: High above the reflecting pond in Ancramdale where the previous image was taken, this trail entices the wanderer. I followed not knowing how far it stretched or where it led but only that it might promise discovery or adventure at any bend. In the still, warm air of autumn there is no hint of a break, and the wanderer expects infinite continuity. Schubert might have followed such a path. I can almost hear his song.

STILL TIME FOR BOOK DISCOUNT:  If you've been considering ordering one of my books, now is a good time to do it. Order before December 31, and Blurb will give a 20% discount off the book's cost.  You'll have to register as a Blurb member, add my book to your cart, and then enter the code, BLURBDISCOUNT, in all caps when asked.  Remember, the discount expires at the end of the year.  Use the links below to view and order.

BLURB BOOKLINKS:

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"Farm," regular format: http://www.blurb.com/books/1524641

"Farm," large format: http://www.blurb.com/books/1524592