Evaporated Milk began while my wife and I were driving up I-89 to Burlington, Vermont. On the way there we looked at some rolling pastures on top of a range of large hills and decided to get off from the interstate to take a quick tour of that area. When we got to the top of those hills we discovered that there were few farms in the area. Instead there were large estates and second homes that, judging from the plates on cars in the driveway, belonged to individuals from Southern New England, New York and New Jersey. As a result of this detour on the way to Burlington I decided to check out if this was happening in other parts of Vermont.
A couple years, dozens of interviews and hundreds of photos later the result was Evaporated Milk. Although the actual shooting, interviewing and writing of the story took roughly a year, there was a long period before that where I scouted out locations and explored the issues before getting underway. I started the story at the University of Maine in Orono covering their program that trains people to be relief milkers so that farmers can get vacations or days off. Not long after that I talked with dairy farmer Burt Patenaude, who was auctioning off his farm equipment after selling his herd. Patenaude invited me to the auction at his farm and while there I ran into Burton Hinton, a dairy farmer from Northern Vermont. Hinton and I started talking after he bought a piece of equipment and during the course of the conversation he told me a great deal about his farm. This sounded exactly like the kind of farm I wanted to spend a day at, so I asked him if that would be alright. Hinton thought it was kind of odd that someone would want to document a day in the life of a dairy farmer, but gave me the OK just the same.
The day spent at the Hinton farm ended up being one of the most productive in the course of the story. I arrived at the Hinton Farm around 6:00 A.M. In the barn we started talking about the fortunes of the Red Sox as Burton moved from cow to cow with the milking apparatus. As soon as I started shooting I found out that the barn is a tough place for camera equipment. A thin cloud from the sawdust used to cover the floors of the barn was constantly hanging in the air, leaving a layer on all of my equipment. Avoiding the random shots and splatters of cow manure was another challenge faced in keeping the camera equipment clean, not to mention myself. These same elements ended up being useful in the making of some very pleasing images. One of my favorite photos from this story was the one of Hinton in the milking barn shoveling sawdust and the cloud it created. Another photo of Hinton milking a cow in his manure stained pants and shirts is a very accurate working portrait of a dairy farmer. The interviews with Burton were also some of the best from the story. He had some strong opinions about the future of dairy farming and why family farmers are dealing with tough times.
Covering the Bartlett family at their farm in Concord, New Hampshire was also very productive. While shooting a double exposure photo of cows in their pasture I met Scott Bartlett. I had just made the first half of the double exposure and was waiting for the cows to move when Scott came along. He told me he was going to have to take away my subjects so that he could take them to the milking barn. This was obviously not a problem because that’s exactly what I wanted. Before he left we talked for a few minutes and he said it would be alright to come by the barn sometime. This resulted in a very good interview with the Bartletts and a nice series of photos. The Bartletts were an especially good source of information about how urbanization is effecting farmers.
One photo that was part luck and part persistence was the shot of the farmer in the snow- covered field who had just finished feeding the cows. This was a shot that I’d had in mind from the beginning of the project. I found it while driving near the Vermont-New Hampshire border, after leaving the McNamara’s farm, looking for a farm-related photo. As mentioned in the comments section that accompanied this photo, I just missed getting the shot the first time and made arrangements to be there on the next snowy day during feeding. I felt that this picture was really representative or symbolic of the life these guys lead; they’re on their own in a sometimes hostile environment.
The photo that I worked the hardest to get was without question the urbanization photo. It shows a tractor haying a field in the foreground and housing complexes on the hilltop in the background. While the photo appears rather simple it took a long time to find the right angle to bring this together. Of course it also required some luck to find a tractor in the field when I came across the angle that I was looking for. Every time I was in the Burlington area I tried to find a shot like this and eventually the persistence paid off.
One other thing worth mentioning is that I went into this story with a plan to use natural light as often as possible, using flash only when it was absolutely necessary. A couple of times I had to use some very slow shutter speeds to achieve this, but in the end it was well worth it. Photos taken at the Hinton Farm, the Vermont State Fair and at the Foster Farm would not have had the same mood or look if any kind of flash had been used.
Shooting and writing Evaporated Milk was ultimately a product of passion. The decline of family dairy farming is an important issue that is neither glamorous or exciting. There are few news outlets out there that would fund this kind of story. A tremendous amount of time and travel was required to get this kind of depth photographically. In addition to that there were hours of phone interviews that gave me great insight and helped lead to many of the photos that appear in this story. None of this would have been possible without the cooperation of the dairy farmers. They shared a great deal about themselves and their work while setting aside time from their busy schedules to do this. For that I am greatly appreciative and I hope that this story accurately portrays the problems that they face.
