Between Planting and Picking - Sandi Haber Fifield photograph © Sandi Haber Fifield

Life on a small farm can be reflective and beautiful. Each season provides a new canvas for natures art combined with a farmers influence.

The end of winter can be trying as the final fits of snow and weather delays the birth of spring. Appreciation of the landscape can be overshadowed by daily chores, worries, and an endless list of things to mend as nature takes its annual toll.

And when I received Sandi Haber Fiflield’s “Between Planting and Picking” photo book in the mail, I was treated to an artful, reflective view of small farm life that allowed me to pause and enjoy her images.

Haber Fifield has found the hidden beauty of  small farms and shares 54 artful images of the time between the promises of spring and the reward of autumn’s harvest.  These are fresh images, most likely familar to the farmer and new to the non farmer.   These scenes are captured from spaces reserved for those who work and relish the work of the land.

The images are best viewed in print, a computer screen can only do them so much justice and the book is a sample of the  gallery show which opens March 3 and runs through April 16 at Rick Wester Fine Art in New York City.

Queen Anne’s lace and parked truck, Nelsen Family Farm, Kerbyville, OR, August 2010 © Sandi Haber Fifield

Haber Fifield’s project began in June 2009 and continued through the fall of 2010. The artist photographed family owned farms spanning New England to the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest. Teeming with the verdant and lush colors of these fertile fields, Haber Fifield made pictures that delicately balance the geographic with the geometric, while using the agricultural landscape to create a complex vocabulary of visual associations. Less documentary in nature and more about challenging her own vision, she finds in the unending cycle of growth and harvest a metaphor for her own image-making.

The monograph includes essays by Dominique Browning and Leslie K. Brown.  Their insight and discussion of the images  put  words to the feelings and emotions captured by Haber Fifield’s work.

Josh Viertel, President of Slow Food USA writes of the book, “Here are pictures of small farms, where food is grown with integrity, and of simple places that are beautiful because of the work that is done there.”

Harvested pumpkins, Belta’s Farm, Westport, CT, October 2010 © Sandi Haber Fifield

As I turned the pages, I found Haber Fifield’s images combining the order and chaos of a field:  a collection of tools, an improvised electrical box, or tools and chairs, as if the inanimate objects were patiently awaiting their owner’s return.

Her images take the viewer to private places: images of a journal/lunar calendar, a solo goose bathing in a tank, behind-the-scenes wash rooms, and laundry blowing in the wind.  There are no people in the collection, yet their influence is shown and felt with the turn of each page.

Many of the images also include barriers: fencing, crop netting, and make-shift backstops.In real life, these barriers  keep out predators and protect crops  and livestock. In the photographs, they serve to keep the troubles of the rest of the world at bay, while the viewer enjoys the art of the small farm.

A "For Sale" sign marks the beginning of a new rural life

My son sent me a link to an AskMetafilter thread about moving to the country.  The author’s question begins:

25 year old single female (kinda) city mouse might go country mouse. How well advised is this move?? I would like to hear from people that have done this and loved it or hated it.

The best response, from the author pseudonym “MonkeyToes” is linked here; and you can read the original question in detail, along with the other replies to the thread.

I’ve posted about a “Typical Day” here at Two Mile and “The Other Kind of Typical Day“.  It’s an interesting blend of work ethic and play ethic that comes from living on a small farm.  There are always things that must be done; hard things that leave skinned knuckles and permanent stains on clothing,   The kind of things that if someone asked you to do for a job, you might quit.  But doing these tasks for yourself becomes a game and a challenge and a riddle to solve.

The AskMetaFilter inquisitor asks a question many others may ask this holiday season and as we push into the new year.  Is it time to make a break?  Is this the year to build a country life?

An excerpt from the MonkeyToes reply:

* The work is endless. Entropy works overtime on a farm, and there is always a fence to repair, a hose that needs replacing because you hit it with the mower, wood to split, weeds to pull, vegetables to can, bread to bake. Sounds delightful, yes? It is, when you can do it by choice. When you’re out of wood in the house and it’s sleeting outside, *you still have to do what needs doing,* whether you want to or not, sick or well, no matter what time it is. Your discretionary time will disappear because you’ll always be trying to keep up with your To-Do list. No TV? That’s fine. I miss sitting down with coffee and The New Yorker–I’m too busy tending the fire and rooting around the barn for the heated pan so the chickens’ water doesn’t freeze.

* Animals are complicated. With each animal, factor in: the expense of feeding; potential veterinary care; housing; and transportation. Do you have the right fencing? A dry barn, or run-in shed outside? Is there a feed mill nearby? How do you haul animals when you must? How do you provide water in freezing temperatures? Are you prepared to put an animal down if necessary? Sheep and goats and cows only look like they just stand there when they’re in someone else’s field and you are driving by, admiring their beauty. Are you hands-on enough to do your own processing, or do you have a butcher nearby? Do you have the knack for picking up weird skills (maggot-picking, chicken-catching, coop-building)? If not, then I hope your friends do.

I share three books (Available from Amazon if you want to help us pay the bills here).  Great gifts for yourself or the friend looking to make the move.  Be forewarned,  giving any of these books to your soon-to-be-rural friend implies tacit permission to  expect you to work when you visit their new rural home.

Along the east, long side, I’ve added a 8 foot wide lean-to pen for the ducks.  And now, at the south end, I’ve placed the chicken coop and soon, the chickens will have their own pen along the south edge as well.

So once again, North Lumber delivered wood and I laid it out on the deck.  a 16 x 48 deck really makes a nice open-air work shop.  I ordered coop plans online from Jenny Robson, and after looking them over and mentally building this in my head, began putting it all together.

I assembled each of the walls and “dry fit” everything to see how it went together.  Then, I took it apart and re assembled it in place, and finished the sheathing, and the interior roosts, nesting box, and feed box.  The chickens moved in last Sunday and seemed pleased with the space.  Since they are about 5 -6 weeks old, the cool night air and the open front design was causing them to pile in the corner the first night, so I ran a 250 watt brooder  lamp for nights for them.  They find a comfort zone near or far from the lamp, depending on the temperature.

I used cedar shakes for the false roof.  One of the unique features of this design is it is a 6 sided cube/rectangle, with chicken wire under the floor and ceiling for added predator protection.  The “roof” can either be pitched or shed, and I opted for shed roof with shakes, and I’m about 7 shakes short of finishing.

The young chickens are experimenting with the roosts and the lip of the nesting box as a perch.  I have two bared rocks that *appear* to be pullets, we will see.  A black sex link, two Buff Orpingtons, and an Ameraucana.

Testing the roosts

In it, he writes:

Coming home to the farm was itself the end of a journey.  What is “home” if not that place?  And the best evidence of having arrived is that I do not feel compelled to always be leaving.

–Which is just as well.  it is impossible for a small farmer to be away for more than a few hours without making the most extensive arrangements with neighbors, and then worrying.  It sounds easy enough– the instructions you’ve left for the letting the stock out in the morning, putting them up at night, for gathering the eggs and milking the cow–but there are subtleties no one could have dreamed who has not been a small farmer….

That is why people who come to the country seldom leave home.  In a nation where every year one-fifth of the population changes its address and twice a day everyone goes somewhere, this seems inconceivable.  But it is not inconceivable if you life on a small farm, and its not to be regretted.

And while I don’t have a cow to milk, nor livestock to be put in or out, I share Winchester’s passion to ‘stay put’.

All the same, I find that while building the cabin, surrounded by the dozens of unfinished tasks which have been left, purposefully, for another time, getting away has its advantages.  A day away, watching a movie, makes returning home that much sweeter.  The sunset is more vibrant, the cabin warmth more inviting, and the call of home more secure.

When I looked into the trees, mixed in with the expected green walnuts hanging from the walnut trees, was a collection of red dots against the dimpled light on the leaves.  I’ve never seen it before today:

A lone apple tree on the steep hill that is quickly eroding into the washout stream below.

It lives in the thick of the brush and on a steep enough slope that the deer leave most of them alone.

I picked a few for the rest of my walk, and then came back later in the day with a bucket to collect some for snacking this month.