Winter Dance

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Winter Dances

So many ways that snow falls! 

Sifted meal piling in a bowl 

Or cross-blown and cheek-stinging 

'Til every tree trunk is skunk-tailed down the side. 

There's raucus, chattering snow that clings as ice

And snow that clumps and thunders softly 

And weighs branches low. 

But last through yawning space, unhurriedly slow, 

Fall silent, gaping flakes of settling down, 

And the tired earth is quilted and quelled,

And ragged meadows dance a brittle dance.

New England White & Red

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Beyond the homestead 

the dizzy abyss of the forest 

and the falling snow.

Slant

PIERRE BONNARD: The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Diligence

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - My eye was grabbed by the layered, early morning light caught in the windows of the farm truck. As I set up the shot I also enjoyed the rectilinear design elements and the way they could divide the rectangle of the picture space. Later, I experimented with different renderings of the initial image and emerged with two very different finalists.

The one above emphasizes the world out of sight as we stand in the shadow, about to or not quite ready to take on the new day. Is it a tiny bit of theater? Is it of any significance that this is Karl Koerner's barn that Andrew Wyeth loved; the light is like light he saw.

The version below puts the emphasis a little differently. It is more two dimensional, more evenly toned, more textured, all to put emphasis on abstract form. It is a classical sampler nudging us to feel the scratchy twine a bit, or the cool, worn steel of the shovel, the heft of the door handle.

For best effect the images should be viewed as close to full screen as possible.

I'm hoping someone will feel strongly enough about one of these or the other to make a case for it, or maybe it doesn't matter much.

Edge

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This week Connecticut is riding the cusp of winter; Arctic chill is freezing lakes and streams, and record-breaking low temperatures are imminent. Daily, the sun pushes back a few of the edges, melts the high points off of mounded snow along the road's edge and glazes it white. Then every few days it snows, restoring edge; as the temperature stings, the river grows photogenic. Keep back from the edge. Sometimes edge divides what is safe from what is suspect; at other times, edge gives contour to challenges.

It's probably a good idea for photographers to watch edges, the spots where mountains suddenly become valleys, where water meets air or where a storm or a smile breaks. These are the places where magic happens. Keep special watch where day meets night, or motion stops. The image stopped on my computer monitor waits while I tune edges and tones making them silky or making them husk. Where is the edge between me and my photo? I stay by the computer while impatient to open new edges with my lens.

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.

JUST TWO MORE DISCOUNT DAYS to take advantage of Blurb's 20% off 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.

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

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?