A group of wild turkeys forage on cow manure recently spread over the field (those brown lines in the foreground), probably for the undigested corn from the cattle’s feed.
There’s a whole science to minimizing the cost of feeding cows, including harvesting the corn when kernels are at their peak maturity, decreasing the particle size of the corn kernels when ground, or using a bacterial inoculant in the silage to maximize fermentation (from an article here, thanks Google). My guess is that the small farmers in the area don’t really concern themselves much with those economics, probably for the same reasons we put up bird feeders in our back yard.
There’s a nice article here on the conservation effort over the past century that brought the turkey population in the US back from thirty thousand to seven million.
I was struck with the flaxen hues of many of the mown fields throughout southern VT last week, a color no doubt enhanced by the light rain that was falling throughout most of our trip. “Looks cold and bleak..”, says a friend from GA, where they are currently reveling in camelias and azaleas. If I was looking at this scene in November, with four or five months of winter to come, I might have agreed. But now, here in April, this scene is positively summer-ish, a prelude of the warmth to come.
Three views of a truck – perhaps a hundred yards out in a field – on a overcast day: the first is at 850mm with a Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary, the second is at 232mm with a Canon 70-200mm, and the third is at 64mm with a Canon 17-55mm. My Canon camera has a crop factor of 1.6, thus the longer actual reach. Each exposure was with Aperture Priority and automatic focus, and processed lightly in Lightroom, using only the Portrait mode.
At this point, I prefer the closeup. It has the simplest composition, the most color, and the mystery and intimacy of a portrait.
We’re now in the back end of winter here in northern New England, and signs of spring are beginning to emerge. One of my favorites is a more expansive dusk; a month ago, it came and went quickly, now it just lingers, not wanting to miss a thing.
Lest we forget all the manual labor that goes into farming: a pile of sawdust (bedding for the cows), four shovels and three wheelbarrows, two of them double tired. And then there’s the color of this barn – gotta love it!!!
A recent drive up Route 102 in Vermont’s NE Kingdom, which meanders through the bottomland of the CT River, offered some magnificent scenery, even by Vermont-in-the-fall standards. I came to realize that I was moving through a huge plain, bounded on the west by the Green Mountains, and the Whites on the east. Those are the foothills of the Whites off in the distance, and (probably) a cherry tree in the foreground.
Four decades old now, this farmers’ market is one of the finest in New England, and well worth a visit if you’re anywhere near the area. See my article “To Market, To Market” in the PUBLICATIONS page for an in depth profile.
