Send an E-Postcard of:
Farm House

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

Alvah, Walter, and George Howes, brothers of Ashfield, Massachusetts, worked together on the road beginning in 1896. Each summer until 1902, they photographed farmers and country people across New England in as natural settings as possible. They then sold the photographs they took to their subjects. Here, an unnamed family stands before their typically New England house one day in mid-summer. The men and boys are just in from haying, as they hold their hay forks and pitchforks. The homestead's five females and one baby stand in the center of the photograph; unlike the men, they seem to have changed into better than ordinary clothes. A cow has been brought up from the pasture. It, the two heavily loaded hay wagons, and the horse standing harnessed in the gig to the right, all suggest this portrait was carefully posed to project hard work and prosperity. This photograph came from the Howes Brothers Collection.

top of page