The Middlebury home base of the J P Carrara reinforced concrete business is one of my favorite places for photography. They structural members on the scale of Interstate bridge supports (thank them if you spend time on New England's freeways) and to do so they need aggregates, i.e. sands and gravels of various sizes. Their location in the foothills of the Green Mountains positions them to take advantage of extensive glacial deposits; there are a lest three other big gravel pits within a few miles along Vermont Route 116. I knew from seeing patterns of erosion in town highway crews' sand piles that there were likely to be interesting sights at Carrara's, and PJ Carrara, the current top executive of the family business, gave me permission to take pictures on Sundays.
Nothing had prepared me for the array of phenomena created by huge piles and huge machinery, Every time I've gone there, I've come away in amazement.
The pictures are separated by year partly because in 2015 I went toward sunset, when the late light accentuate yellow-orange colors, and partly because 2016's bigger piles and heavier rains created different scapes.
PJ said I could include pictures of the processing equipment. I wanted to do this because all the photogenic aspects derive from a lot of hard work and conscientious ingenuity. Carrara's isn't the only place in Vermont where this is the case--farming,construction, and other extraction activities share in this--but let what I have said bout Carrara's stand for all of working Vermont.