back to the dairy

I'm headed back to the Dairy today to meet with Laurel about the book project. We are writing a story about where milk comes from. Its going to communicate all of the important values to their brand: family, small dairy, local. The story is about her son and husband and will use photos from their dairy to illustrate the text. I'm hoping to mount this on some thick boards that she can use for her school tours, about 13x19 or 11x17 size to make it easy to read.

Illinois-a-no-no

Just got back from my roadtrip to Illinois to work on my project for Annie's Project, the non-profit education and support group for women. yeah! (It really is a great organization). I waited a few days to write about it on here because I needed some time to breathe and vent.

The purpose of the trip was to film 3 ladies' stories about their lives and involvement with Annie's Project. I met all 3 of them and they really are very helpful and great people. Ruth, the founder of the org, and I came up with the idea to create small video spots/ testimonials for her to put on her website to entice future women. The interesting thing about the organization is that it is growing rapidly, virtually by word of mouth. There are no advertisements and Ruth attributes the growth to a result to our (females) natural tendencies to talk ...alot.

The problem is that after filming the first woman, I realized the camera was broken. I promptly called the media office at K-State, where they rent out equipment, only to be told that they had been having some problems with the particular model that they then checked out to me. (imagine me, in a car in Illinois, taking many many deep breaths at this point...)

I continued on to meet the other 2 ladies involved, but wasn't able to film them. I have decided that there are many paths to communicate the same message, and video footage can no longer be my path. Maybe animated type, audio, still photos, ...but definitely not video.
Not when you spent close to $300 on gas only to end up with a broken video camera.

my little friends

my first time taking photos with a manual camera: a minolta 35mm slr. i went out to a dirt road by alma, ks and found this group of cows. here's two photos from it. (i scanned in the negatives and developed them digitally myself) i was really proud of myself; pretty good for a first time. i really like how tactile the border of the film makes the photos. and the color worked out really well. i took 2 rolls of film and i plan to incorporate the photos into my work.
anybody know of a slr camera for sale? this trip made me want one of my own (instead of borrowing my friend's)

road trip

I have a video project planned for march 26 in Hill City. I knew once I got back from the conference that education was important to farm women, especially education showing the production process of the farm. I came up with the idea of using video and diagrams to bring ag in the classroom on a new level. As it stands now, all of the training and activities are taught in person. Video is a great way for the training to take place regardless of location.

Cathy has been working on getting a similar video project to be sponsored by bayer and Monsanto and was excited about the possibility of my project as a rough proposal for them.

So Cathy Musick (exec. director of Kansas Ag in the Classroom) and I are taking a road trip! I will travel with her to hill city march 26th and video tape her doing 3 activities at a 4th grade classroom. Then I will go back in and edit the footage to include my diagrams/ titles.


This marks one project scheduled and underway. Fingers crossed for the next one I'm working on: Annie's Project.

can i get some help please?

after a few months of trying to be accepted by farm women, i'm just starting to get a little feedback! i recieved a business card in the mail from one women. my favorite part that makes it unique is that it lists every member of her family.
i also got in touch with the creator of Annie's Project. Ruth Hambleton started Annie's Project to provide a network and support for farm women. she has begun emailing me and sent me a link to a project created about it.

http://web.missouri.edu/~kwsc46/elaine/elaine.html

this is the direction i've been trying to go with my project (but on a larger scale). i've been attending meetings like kansas agri-women and contacting anybody and everybody i can think of to put me in contact with farm women who would be willing to share their stories with me.
so far, no luck but i think its just been a slow process and i am starting to get some feedback now. the business card and my emails with ruth have given me hope!

is this seat taken?

I just returned from a the Women Managing the Farm conference in Hutchinson, Kansas a couple weeks ago. The conference was tough and consisted of me putting myself out there again and again. It involved a series of educational workshops where women learned about a variety of topics: estate planning to soil sampling.
The first day was pretty lonely for me because these women exists within a closed network. The more I introduced myself to people, the more I recognized that "outsider" was stamped on my forehead. Even at the organizations' tables I was met with polite indifference. It was an odd experience.
However, even though I personally didn't have the best time at the confernce, I learned a lot. Even their attitudes toward me taught me how important trust is to them. Like with any group, farm women are a very tight knit group.
So...what conclusions have I made?
*to get my project accepted and used by them, i personally have to be accepted by them
*are these farm meetings a good use of my time? i have to prioritize, but have been trying to attend and make contact with various farm groups to get accepted

...8 months to go...

Welcome! The purpose of this blog is to archive my MFA Thesis process. I will be recording any activities, thoughts, and research that I do along the way. I hope to create a digital notebook that keeps everything in one place, something I just can't do with a filing cabinet. My exhibit is scheduled for October 27!