If only all photo shoots could happen at sunset, with perfectly fluffy puffy clouds, donkeys, barns, brand new tiny lambs and a community of lovely people who work to take care of them. Thank you, Fibershed, for bringing me out of my editing shell to Bodega Pastures. Look for a full Farm Story on Fibershed coming soon.
And that means lots of cute baby faces.
And lots of proud mom faces too.
Some of the moms I helped deliver when they were born… like the sheep named Paige, who is standing above. I helped deliver her on my first night living on the farm, five years ago.
It is funny to compare what she and I have both done over the past five years… she has probably given birth to eight lambs, whereas I have gone to London, gotten my master’s degree and gotten married.
I remember when I lived on the farm, I wanted to start a woman’s movement for these girls. I tried to tell them to: Run. Go. I told them there is a big world out there and they don’t have to spend their life being pregnant.
But by the time fall would come around again, they must have forgotten everything that I told them. Because there they’d be, standing at the fence, heads hanging low and panting heavily at the ram on the other side, who was breathing just as hard as he eagerly waited for his glorious day to come.
So the lambs are here again, and they are learning how to jump while I am learning video…
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It is MALT time again for me, which means I get to go explore amazing ranches in West Marin and document what goes on, for MALT’s (Marin Agricultural Land Trust) annual report.
This time I went to Barinaga Ranch. The owners, Marcia Barinaga and her husband Corey Goodman, wanted to buy a farm and retire in West Marin. But they quickly decided that they didn’t want to retire in the usual way, instead they decided to keep the land in agriculture by raising sheep for cheese. Neither having grown up on a ranch, they had a lot to learn.
But they have been learning quickly, and only a few years after they purchased the land, they now have their very first cheese available on the market this fall. Some of the places you can find their cheese are: Oliver’s in Santa Rosa, Cowgirl Creamery and Osterina Stellina, in Point Reyes Station.
It is nice to be connected with people who promote my photography, since I don’t do a good job of promoting myself. Ever since I returned from London, I have been meaning to take my portfolio around to magazines in the area, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet.
But luckily, Mimi, my soon-to-be-mother-in-law, is an amazing person with a wonderful lifestyle that magazines want to write about. So when Brandon, from California Country Magazine, called her and said they wanted to do a story about her and her natural dying process, she said, “I have just the photographer for you.”
It was so fun to have a taste of what real magazine work, and budgets, are like. The magazine gave me a shot list and an exact number of photos that they wanted… and when Brandon asked me if I would be “ok” with their day rate… I had to try and remain cool and not act surprised…. yeah, I guess that’ll do.
These are just some of my favorites from the day and what I learned about natural dying…
First… collect your plant material… Mimi uses black walnuts, dahlias, onion skins, marigolds and tansy (shown below.)
Here is a super simplified instruction list for making your own natural dyes:
Put your material in your pot…
bring it to boil…
cook for an hour…
strain it…
let it cool…
add a mordant (Mimi uses nontoxic mordants like alum and cream of tarter)…
add your pre-soaked wool…
bring to boil again…
cook for an hour…
cool in dye…
rinse until water runs clear…
and hang to dry.
Thanks to: Mimi for promoting me, and to California Country Magazine for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. I hope it is just the beginning of my magazine assignments.
You can buy Mimi’s beautiful natural dyed wool at the Pt. Reyes Farmers’ Market in front of Toby’s Feed Barn on Saturdays, or she will soon be at the Marin Civic Center Farmers’ Market on Sundays.
For the last three years, I have been lucky to get assignments for MALT, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. I do all kinds of things for them, including, documenting events like Taste of Marin, and their hikes on MALT protected ranches. It has been a wonderful partnership, because I have been able to go places that I wouldn’t normally get to go to and meet people who I wouldn’t meet otherwise.
And for the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to collect images for their Annual Report. The theme is ‘tools of the trade.’ I will post some of those photos next. But in addition to tools, Elisabeth also wanted powerful overall landscape photos… photos that show nature, with a slight trace of human impact and some animals. My first round of photos weren’t so impressive… which isn’t surprising because landscapes really are not my specialty.
So, I had one last night to try again… but it is challenging with our bright blue cloudless skies, because without anything interesting in the sky, it puts all the pressure is on the landscape itself… and the window of opportunity for good landscape light lasts about 10 minutes… and then it is gone. So it is a game of wait…wait…wait…wait…wait….then…. go-go-go-go-go…. and then it’s over… until next year’s Annual Report… so I hope, with these photos, I got what she wanted.
I just got around to scanning these, they are from the sheep shearing day I wrote about earlier. Those photos are digital and these are from the beloved Rollei.
Look at the detail in the ringlets…. I love it. But as you can see, I still need to work on how to use the Rollei because…..
….. you look through the top lens, but photograph through the one below, so you don’t get exactly what you see in the viewfinder and therefore I don’t have the sheep’s feet. I guess that means I have to practice. That word practice used to make me cringe when it was said by my childhood piano teacher or my basketball coach but now it makes me excited, so I think that is a good sign.
somewhere between a handshake and two kisses 