Haystacks, Horses, and Dusty Roads

[Olypen]

There was a time when haystacks, horses, and dusty roads could be relied on to give some feeling for midwestern country life.  Now that these chestnuts are long gone, what replaces them?  I still see a lot of great photos of red barns; but, truth to tell, around here they're (literally) falling down fast and the ones that remain are often boutiques for the by-passers.  There are still some dusty roads around (and there actually may be more as counties face tough budgets) but what they border is much more industrial and managed than the landscape of  the 40's and 50's that Kodak often featured.  So I keep looking for scenes that can replace the departed standbys; I'm not sure if I succeed.  Here are a few of my attempts; they come from an area that Minnesotans would know as "the edge of the Big Woods" or "just before you reach prairie land"--it's good and productive farm country.

Hay Bales at Edge of Plowed Field

Corn Rows in Spring

Baled Cornstalks in Fall Field

(Photos made on color negative film and converted to B&W in PS Elements; Olympus Stylus Epic; Minolta Freedom Zoom Explorer; Olympus XA)

[LarryD]

Time stops for no man but I think you did capture the change with a little slice of the past there.

[Tom Hildreth]

Nice shots. The aspect ratio on two of them approaches panoramic. Was that cropping or something more complex?

[Olypen]

Larry and Tom:

Thanks for your comments.

Larry:  Your comment is right on from the pov of what I was thinking about this post: the first and third photos just wouldn't have been made 25 years ago because the technology (large, round bale) didn't exist; the second is the more traditional look, though changed by much smaller margins between field and road and by the close mowing of roadsides.

Tom:  Yes, you're right-- the first and the third are significant crops; both photos were made with 35mm lenses out the window of a car (sometimes that's all I can do if there's not much of a shoulder on the road) so a lot of foreground had to go.

[br1078lum]

Bill, one of my favorite techniques is to crop a normal photo to make it look panoramic.  That's what all those P&S cameras did with their moving blinds in the film chamber.  You have to wonder over the years how many folks might have stopped in the same places you did to take a photo.  It would be great to get all those shots together for comparison.

PF

[Olypen]

Phil,

Thanks for your comments.  Yes, wouldn't it be great to have a series showing the change in a farmscape's look.  Maybe something could be done in an area like a township where a lot of families are still on the original homestead.  I'm glad to hear about your use of cropping to get the panorama.  I guess the vf blind in a P&S camera would help to figure out what you could get; I'll have to try that too...actually I think I'll try it tomorrow when I'll be in the country. 

[Ronald Bishop]

You have a great idea Bill,run with it.
     Back when I was a kid they called it 'bucking bails' and they weighed about 120#. Bucking meant placing the on a flat bed truck or wagon.
Well when I was an early teenager I bucked bales also, but by then they had cut them down to about 85#, still damn hard work.

Here is a picture of my mother{chin in hand} sitting on the hay rack, it went unto the wagon in the summer and on the sled in the winter.
    The lady with the hat lived in that house,my dad sold it to them, I lived in it from about 1938 till about 1943 ? Before it had the lean-to addition
added.

[Olypen]

Thanks for your comments, Ronald.  Your post and photograph bring back lots of memories for me.  When I was a youngster we still "put up" loose hay and what didn't fit in the barn was left in the meadow (it was meadow hay which we needed for the horses) in stacks.  As you say, come winter the hay rack was lifted off the wagon wheels and onto the sled.  If the timing didn't work out just right, we might be cutting into some haystacks after heavy snow which made the trip back pretty interesting; we youngsters would perch on the up side of the rack and lean out to keep it from tipping on the side-hills which are pretty hard to avoid where we lived.  In your photo, I think I can see a sled runner off on the left side.  Well, I shouldn't get too far off topic.  Anyway, that's a precious photo that you have.   

[Kalkadan]

Oly I think you succeeded.  For me you captured the essence of the old Kodak photos. 

I have a copy of "How to Make Good Pictures - the complete handbook for the amateur photographer" Eastman Kodak Company-Rochester. N.Y. (copyright 1943 by Eastman Kodak Company).  It features the type of photos you describe in your post and it's been my bible since the mid-1960s.  I borrowed it from the local municipal library when I was a boy in 1963; a fact established by the return card still in its jacket pasted inside the front cover showing that I borrowed it out on 22 August 1963.  Just have not got around to returning it yet.  Late Fees will be enormous.

I'll show you a couple when the scanner has finished what it's doing at the moment.  However your Hay bales are classic, but then so is the road and the Barn.

Dan

[Ronald Bishop]

Off Topic

Bill, you must know what a hay knife is then?

[jamesmck]

Bill - I haven't been able to comment on too many photos here at NFf lately, but your excellent and timeless shots compel a hearty 'well-done.'  What a wonderful piece of country for the photographer.

James

[Olypen]

Ron:
About hay knife:  I'm fuzzy about it-- I know what it is and think I remember one hanging around somewhere, but I never used one and never saw one used.  The picture I have in my mind is of a fairly long, bent tool with the cutting edge looking like a slightly curved sickle from a mower (triangular sections).  Am I on the right track or am I confusing it with an ice saw-- another tool we had but I never saw used?  Getting back to photos, I have a couple old hay-related snapshots which I'll see if I can scan and put in the "Found and Vintage" section.

[Olypen]

James:

Thanks for your comment.  Yes, McCleod county, where those photos were taken, still has many family farms plus a few hills, valleys, and lakes here and there; so there is some variety.  Best wishes,

Bill