Niese’s Maple Farm

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Entrance to the farm

The Niese’s Farm web site says:

The Niese family has boiled maple sap for seven generations. We are the oldest family maple producers in southern New York, from single buckets of syrup in 1892, to miles of sap lines today, we’ve kept our quality high and service unbeatable.
“Since early childhood I’ve worked the entire maple sap to syrup process with my father and grandfather – Dad still boils at age 80, so we’ve always kept it going strong. Farming is something that’s just in you.”

The Putnam County News also has an article on the farm

We went there for breakfast on father’s day. They also had music in the form of two singers who also played guitar and flute.

Glenn Niese - The Owner

Glenn Niese – The Owner.

Tractor

Tractor outside the store

Bert and Ernie

Bert and Ernie

Wood carving with a chainsaw

Wood sculptures

Doll

Inside the store

Scarecrow

Scarecrow

Leaving Niese's

The sign says it all

My First Camera

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I’ve always said that my interest in photography dates back to the mid 1970s when my wife gave me a minolta rangefinder camera. However, I started collecting old cameras a while back and while browsing through a book I saw a camera that looked familiar. It was a Kodak Brownie Vecta and I then remembered that I had it as a child.

John Margetts’ old camera blog has a post on it. In the post he says:

This article is about the Brownie Vecta which was made in the UK and presumably only available here. I was given one of these for a birthday present when I was was eleven or twelve years old when it was a strikingly modern looking camera. It was designed for Kodak by the British industrial designer Kenneth Grange and its ‘natural’ format is portrait as that is what Kenneth Grange assumed it would mostly be used for…The Vecta was only in production for three years (from 1963 to 1966). It is basically a grey plastic cuboid with a central lens and a viewfinder in one corner. The shutter release is a white bar underneath the lens. It takes 127 film which is hard to find nowadays but is still available

Maybe I’ll try to get hold of some.

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I was cleaning out some old stuff and I came across this picture, which I remember taking with that camera. It’s of my father and our dog Peg in front of the house where I grew up in Sandbach, UK. I must have been about twelve at the time and my father would have been about 45. Both of my parents passed away some time ago. The house in the picture was emptied and sold. At the time I wasn’t so much interested in old cameras and as mentioned had even forgotten that I had had this camera. So this isn’t the original camera – that one is long gone, but it’s nice to have an instance of the first camera I ever used. It’s not such a bad picture either considering the camera is basically a fancy box with a lens in it. I suppose the large size of the 127 negative helps. As far as I know this is the only photograph from this camera that survives.

Carmel, NY

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I provided some pictures of Carmel in an earlier post: In and around Carmel, NY. It’s such a picturesque place I took some more:

Why so many flags?

I don’t know why all of the flags are out. In preparation for July 4th? Some other event of which I’m unaware?

American Legion Post 270

American Legion Post 270 with the Putnam County Office building to the left in the background.

Backlit tree on Lake Gleneida

Backlit tree on Lake Gleneida.

One of the St. James the Apostle buildings

St.James the Apostle has, in addition to the church itself, a number of other buildings (e.g. the school). This is one of them.

Fishing on West Branch Reservoir

Just across the causeway as I was driving home I saw this mother and son just starting to pack up after fishing on the West Branch Reservoir.

Putnam County Courthouse

Wikipedia has this to say about the Putnam County Courthouse:

New York’s Putnam County Courthouse is located on Gleneida Avenue (NY 52) across from the eastern terminus of NY 301 in downtown Carmel, the county seat, overlooking Lake Gleneida. First built in 1814, two years after the county itself was established, it is the second-oldest county courthouse still in use in the state after Fulton County’s.

In 1847 it was renovated extensively. At that time the Classical Revival portico and columns were added. Architect James Townsend used commercially available (although inexact) copies of the Corinthian capitals from the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. For this and its historic importance in the county’s history it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976….The courthouse is a two-story, 5-by-8-bay rectangular gable-roofed frame building, with clapboard siding on the north and south sides and horizontal planks on its west (front) facade. The pedimented gable is supported by the four Corinthian columns, behind which is the main entrance, with molded classical detail. Similar ornamentation can be found on the window lintels. The two front corners have large pilasters; the original stone plinth blocks have been replaced with concrete copies and the astragals taken down to help prevent dry rot in the columns.

The stone walls of the original county jail are still visible on the south side. A two-bay east wing, added later, extends from the rear. A cupola is atop the roof.

Corinthian Column on Putnam County Courthouse

One of he Corinthian capitals.

GAS attack gone wrong?

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Warning – long post. We’ve just had a few days of quite heavy rain. After one of the storms (once upon a time I thought that the word storm meant strong winds, heavy rain, thunder, lightning etc., but apparently nowadays what I would once have called a rainy day is now referred to as a storm) I went down early in the morning to our house in Westchester to see how it had weathered the “storm”. I was waiting for my wife to join me, but since she isn’t always an early riser I knew that I might have a few hours to kill. What to do? I really felt like taking pictures, but foolishly had forgotten to take a camera with me. It occurred to me that I could go to a CVS and get a single use camera. Or was there another alternative? I knew that there was a Goodwill store close by. Sometimes they have cameras. I could check that out – so off I went. There were three possibilities: a Praktica SLR, a Ricoh SLR and a Yashica SLR. The Ricoh looked nice but both it and the Praktica were completely frozen up. The Yashica was much better. Shutter seemed to fire OK. Focus was smooth. Meter appeared to be working. Aperture ring turned without any problems. How much I asked? $9.99 was the reply. A Kodak one time use camera from CVS costs $11.99 (it does come with a film though). The Yashica came with the body, a 50mm f1.9 lens, a 52mm skylight filter, a strap and a working flash. What could I lose.

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As it turned out I spent so much time walking the dog, looking for fresh batteries and film for the camera that I didn’t have any time left to take pictures that day. I wasn’t able to get out again for a couple of days and this gave me time to do some research on the camera. It’s a fully manual Yashica FX-2 with a built in coupled meter, but no autofocus or auto exposure. Back when this was made Yashica worked with Carl Zeiss to produce the Contax SLR. The two camera lines share the same lens mount. Yashica made two series of lenses for this mount: the not so great DSB, which is what this camera has and the much better ML. There was also the tantalizing possibility of using the legendary Zeiss Planar 50mm 1.4, which has the same mount.

Sounds good so far? Not for much longer. Fiddling around with the camera I discovered that the aperture is in fact stuck wide open at f1.9. Not so great, but it’s still possible to take pictures if you choose your lighting and subject appropriately. I dug out an old black and white film and went to try it. Total disaster! Of the 24 exposures only about six came out. The rest were completely blank. This is one of the few:

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Checking the negatives it looked as if, in addition to the stuck aperture, there’s also a shutter problem. At some speeds the shutter wasn’t opening properly (or not at all). Unfortunately I hadn’t kept notes on what shutter speed I’d used for what shots.

Since I had an adapter for my NEX 5n I decided to try the lens on that. The next picture shows the result. Not too shabby.

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Looking through the back of the camera and trying each speed in turn it looked as if the 1/000 second speed was not working. Since the aperture was stuck at 1.9 I’d used the 1/000 setting a lot in order to expose correctly. This was probably why so many of the shots hadn’t come out. Time to try again. I found another old black and white film and and off I went. It was a bright, sunny day: not the best of days for a camera with an aperture stuck at f1.9 and top shutter speed(s) not working. However, the results were much better. I kept notes this time and, as I suspected, all of the speeds were working except 1/1000 second. This time 23 of the 24 shots came out: all but the one taken at 1/1000. Some of the results are below:

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Was it worth it? I would say so. Even if the camera had been a total dud the strap, the flash and the skylight would have offset the low cost of the camera. And I had great fun for a couple of days reading about this camera and trying it out. I can live without the 1/1000 shutter speed (many of my old cameras only have a top speed of 1/500 and sometimes less). More problematic is the stuck aperture. Since this lens isn’t the best available for this mount I could just junk it and get one of the ML lenses. Or I could fork out $300-$400 for the Zeiss Planar. Not actually a lot considering that the same lens in Canon or Nikon mount costs around $800 and up and an equivalent Leica lens (e.g. 50mm 1.4 Summilux) costs from $3,000 upwards. Or I could try to fix the aperture problem.

I’ve decided to consider both options. I’ll keep the old lens and may try to repair it. I’ve found detailed step by step instructions with pictures on how to do this so I might just give it a try. If I ruin it I haven’t lost much. I found a $9.99 50mm f2 Yashica ML on eBay (Coincidentally from Goodwill Maine). It just arrived, but that’s a topic for another post. And I’ve still got my eye on that Planar.

P.S. for those who don’t already know GAS means ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome’: a term used to describe an urge to acquire and accumulate lots of gear

Peekskill Hollow Road

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Peekskill Hollow Road runs from Oscawana Lake Road in Putnam Valley over to Route 301 near Carmel, NY – a distance of about 11 miles. It’s quite a picturesque road, which passes through some of the once separate hamlets, which now make up Putnam Valley e.g. Tompkins Corners, Adams Corners etc. There are a number of interesting buildings, as well as a few small cemetaries along the way.

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Tompkins Corners United Methodist Church. 178 years old and apparently, with its carriage shed, the only buildings in Putnam Valley recorded on the State and National Register of Historic Places. If you’d like to buy a church it’s presently for sale, although there are said to be quite severe restrictions regarding what you could do to it.

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Tompkins Corners Deli. A blue historic marker signs adjacent to the property reads: “Tompkins Corners. Was settled in the 1770’s by four Tompkins brothers. A turnpike here passed store, church, mill and tavern. F.D. Roosevelt spoke here”. The store and the church remain. I guess the mill and the tavern have gone. Too bad – particularly the tavern.

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Ruined building along Peekskill hollow road. I’ve no idea what it was. Since the picture was taken it’s deteriorated further. I imagine it won’t be around for much longer.

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Travis Burying Ground (a.k.a. Bryant Hill Burying Ground). According to the Putnam Graveyards site it is less than 1/2 acre, has 36 gravestones with 12 family names, the earliest being from 1798. It goes on to say:

On the east side of the creek, a short distance above the road that runs over Bryant Hills, is the Old Travis Homestead, now owned by Chadwick Travis. This was the home of Titus Travis, who came here before the Revolution, and was the ancestor of several of the families of that name. On the west side of the Peekskill Hollow road, a little way north of the road running west by the school house, are the remains of an old house, whose curious stone chimney dates back to Revolutionary days. This was the dwelling of George Travis, one of the sons of the original settler. At the corner of the main road and the one going over Bryant Hill, is the old Travis burying ground.

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By Tompkins Corners deli, corner of Wiccoppee Road. This gentleman gives hay rides around Hallowe’en. He was kind enough to stop for me to take some pictures.

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The Putnam Valley Historical Society is located in the Schoolhouse (it actually is a former schoolhouse) Museum at Adams Corners (Chruch Road & Peekskill Hollow Road). It was chartered April 26, 1968 by the Board of Regents and develops programs and exhibits about the Town, its people, buildings and specific events which contributed to its culture and history.