FROM ROCKS AND RAIN

In the winter of 2008 I returned to a town on the west coast of Ireland where I lived and studied four years earlier. I went back to photograph family farms in a country transformed by a booming economy, advancing technology, and globalizing forces such as the European Union. It was the middle of February when I arrived, colder and wetter than average, but far more green than the three feet of snow I left behind in New England. By all appearances, spring had arrived in Ireland. The first daffodils were up, lambing had begun and calving would soon start. I followed the work of three farms over the course of that spring season, photographing and engaging with farmers and their families and local agricultural professionals in an ongoing discussion of what farming is and means today.

How these farms exist in relation to something as large, far-removed, and abstract as the E.U. is not always apparent in the day-to-day reality of their lives. The nature of necessity but also the necessity of nature is far more apparent in the day-to-day than the bureaucratic and economic structures under which it occurs. However, that Mikey has beef cows and not sheep for wool in his field, and that Tony is just now building a shed, and the way in which Roger goes about treating a sick calf are not by chance or even tradition, but all connected directly to the larger politics of agriculture. Where farmers derive their funding and which enterprises produce grant money dictates what is worthwhile to farm. And for small family operations, being able to achieve the greatest possible income from one's land and work is a matter of business that translates directly into how one lives. There is no physical divide between work-life and home-life on a farm, and the impact of government regulation is not abstract but immediate and a matter of daily living.

Farming in Ireland is such a great part of the nations history as well as its economy. The work and tools for the job may change, but what stays constant is the committed work and care that goes into farming ones family holdings. That will not change whatever economic forces may be at hand.

It is always a joy to spend time working with these men and women and their families, and I cannot thank them enough for all they have shared with me.

Thanks also to funding provided by the Monica Flaherty Frassetto Fund, this project will be continued. Please look for news and updates.

                KATY HAAS PHOTOGRAPHY