Tall Grass, Gates Road

Over the years I've taken a surprising number of photos that are more or less like this one. Here's a sample.

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"Had a plan for today's snap. Didn't work out." So said I, one year ago today.

Actually, I had two ideas. There was an interior shot that failed because of inadequate lighting; I found better light a few days later, and succeeded.

The other failed because, well, I couldn't find a suitable example. Farmers around here typically harvest their winter wheat sometime in July, then a few days later follow up by baling up the wheat's still-standing stalks. The bales are surprisingly various; large and small, round and rectangular. (I'm assuming there are several markets, and that the packaging reflects the expected use. But what do I know?)

Anyway, a couple days before I'd noticed that one of my neighbors had turned his stalks into a few dozen unusually large rectangular bales, and stacked them as a wall along the edge of the field. The effect was pretty spectacular, and I wanted to capture it. Alas, by the time I got there with a camera the crop had been loaded on trucks and shipped away.

So I wandered the township seeking, well, any kind of fresh bale. No luck. I found a farmyard full of hay bales, obviously stocked up for winter feeding, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. Apparently I was too late.

So a year ago, and again today, you get to sample the day's insurance shots.

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The barn I photographed for 366 Snaps (below) was built by the McCargar family, who were among the township's first settlers. Daniel Strange's Pioneer History of Eaton County reports that John McCargar wanted land with pretty specific specs; after he'd cleared the trees away he built a nice house and (probably) this barn next to a (still) pretty stream on the south edge of the township, probably around 1840 (he arrived in 1837). Nearly six decades later, according to the 1895 plat map, the land still belonged to the McCargar family.

The barn photograph provoked some discussion on Facebook. The McCargar house--a fairly fancy place, but in serious disrepair--was still up the hill from the barn when I moved to the Lansing area. It's now gone. Joan, whose local memory dates from 1995, doesn't recall it, while a friend who used to live a mile or so west of the barn thinks the house was still there when she moved away in 1998. I guess we don't know....

I've photographed this barn several times; here's one example.

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This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps.

Number of project photos taken: 34
Title of "roll:" Around Roxand
Other photos taken on 8/6/2012: none.