Working Land refers to two facets of rural landscape: the idea of working the land as a vocation and as a description of productive ground. My family tree includes immigrant ancestors who made a living from working the soil and some of their descendants who carry on this work to the present day. That personal connection to working land inspired the project.
silage bag
Michels farm, December 16, 2015: I visited the Michels farm after one of the first snowfalls of the winter to photograph this annual transformation of the landscape. Instead of a traditional vertical silo, Trenton Michels uses silage bags, enormous plastic tubes, to store corn silage to feed his dairy herd. This photograph shows only the end of a bag many yards long stuffed like a sausage with the winter’s forage.