Tag Archives: kids

I spent a good part of the summer photographing Oregon and Washington Dairies for Organic Valley. I can’t think of a better way to spend the summer than traveling through the northwest and visiting with farmers and spending time with cows and kids.  In dairy, where it’s been difficult for farmers to turn a profit over the last 20 years and quite a few families have left the business, I was impressed to see second, third and even fourth generations joining the business.  Organic Valley is definitely doing something to make small farms sustainable.

This is Lucky. She lives at Double J Jerseys where she enjoys grass, nose-licking, and staring at photographers.

The farmers were incredibly helpful – there’s just no way I could have done these shoots without them.  With their help, I knew where the bulls were, I knew how to get over and under fences, I was fed beautiful organic and wild foods, I borrowed farm-vehicles, kids showed me where their favorite birds nests and calves were, I met all the 4-H animals, and just had a blast.

Baby cows are very curious about pig-tails.

I might have some nose-prints on my equipment.

A few words on working with cows:  I LOVE COWS.  They are really very fun to work with.

That said, they weigh about 1,000 pounds so I would never photograph them without talking to the farmer (this is the “don’t try this at home kids” section of the blog), finding out the location of any hazards and of course the bulls – in the freezer being best for photographic purposes.  And no, I’m not talking about beef.

Cows have that prey-animal instinct to run if you approach them or make sudden movements.  On the other hand, if I sat still for too long, I’d risk the whole herd getting curious, surrounding me, sniffing me, trying to lick me or my bag and generally cracking me up.

So I did a lot of walking sideways to try to get the cow I wanted in the spot I wanted for a good shot.  Basically I did a lot of roaming about on green pastures surrounded by beautiful country – hard job, I know.

To see more images of OV farms, go to the Find Your Farmer section of the Organic Valley Website.