Harvest

There is A Visual Beauty to Farm Land

Especially at Harvest Time

Harvest

From the series:  A View From the Farm

48" x 48"

Acrylic and photography on stretched Canvas

Have you ever driven through or spent time in an area where crops are grown?  The Central Valley of California is just such a place.

Driving through land covered with cotton, wheat, oats, barley, nut trees, corn, and tomatoes can be a visual treat. These are wide open spaces bustling with activity which changes with the seasons.  Spring time is beautiful with new growth, Summer is hot with crop maturity taking place, and Fall is abundant with harvest.  The tail end of harvest time is especially interesting to me.  It's the end and it's the beginning.  

Hay Stack

Stacks of hay, cotton and nuts which have already been cut or picked, sit along the sides of the fields and roads waiting to be moved and used. 

Harvested nuts, covered and waiting

While the sky is not so blue it is understandable with all the tractors working the fields stirring up dust.  Cutting, gathering, ripping, listing...it's all taking place.  

Harvested Cotton waiting for a trip to the gin

Loaded trucks are cruising the roads taking their haul to packing houses and processors. Tractors, monotonously moving back and forth, are reworking the ground to prepare for the next season. 

There's a rhythm to all of it, and there is a color to it as well, many colors.  The colors we associate with Fall surround farming this time of year.

Corn Stubble

Have you seen where the food you eat and crops you use are planted, grown and then harvested?  If not, I suggest you take a trip to a farm area just to see what is going on, and find a farm that will give you a tour.  Not only will you experience a visual treat but you will have an educational experience.


I have a friend who farms in Colorado.  Take a look at her blog  and you will get a peek into the life of a farming family.  Boyles Family Farms

A couple weeks ago I visited an organic farm and restaurant  in Baja California where they grow what they serve.  The menu was interesting, the presentation was beautiful and the food tasty.  They are sustainable farmers who believe what they do should benefit the land and the people around them.  Here's a link to their web site:  http://www.flora-farms.com/site/default.aspx  They are located in a lush, palm filled valley and the restaurant sits in the middle of their fields, so you are surrounded by rows of growing edibles.  It's colorful and unique.

Some of the farmers I know in the Central Valley are working large tracts of land, hundreds of acres, sending their production far and wide. They too believe what they do should benefit the land and the people around them.  It's just on a different scale.  

Whether you visit a small farm or a large farm, whether you visit in Fall or another time of year, you are in for a visual treat, an educational experience that is heightened by the visual.