A YEAR ON THE FARM
Isabel Rogers
The rolling hills of Somerset have not escaped the global trend towards intensive farming practices. There is, however, a small but growing movement of regenerative farming; people who are taking on the task of not only growing good healthy food but in a way that restores nature and a balanced ecosystem. My friend Hannah is one such, a tenant farmer with a small beef herd. Along with native wildflower reseeding, Hannah employs a ‘mob grazing’ strategy, reproducing natural grazing movements that wild ungulate herds would have performed. The cows are slowly transforming the previous monocrop rye grass into diverse grassland popping with knapweed and timothy grass, hiding sky larks and hares.
I moved onto the farm in winter ’22 when Hannah’s early mornings were spent defrosting water pipes for the herd. Not an abnormal task for her, but this year she had a 6-month pregnant belly. I wanted to document the journey of my friend, not only in the realities of being a solo female farmer, but also in the growing of her new family – for a farmer never gets a real maternity leave. My short stay turned into a year, with Hannah’s daughter arriving in early spring. Along with farmhand help, Hannah continued to look after her cows and I continued to capture moments as life cycled its way along on the farm. More government support for those who grow food in ecologically sound ways is urgently needed, and with my photos I wanted to tell the story of people like Hannah, for whom farming is not just a business but a movement towards leaving the land in a better state for generations to come.
This article first appeared in PRISMA, Issue 16.