bye bye blogger

keep up with me @ courtneydudley.tumblr.com ♥ 

upstate

These are part of multiple ongoing projects about farms in upstate New York.

Some photos were published a while back alongside a brilliant audio piece by Aurora Almendral on WNYC.

Many of these were taken before Christmas but have been sitting around neglected until now, the slow and cold season. Time to organize catalogs, rework websites and find those hidden missing gems.

Kelley's Pond

india and southeast asia

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.” ― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

workcations

By the look of my photos lately, I don't actually live in NYC. I'm lucky that I've been able to spend so much time upstate in the Catskills working on projects and in Texas visiting friends and family and swimming every day.

Meredith, NY

I've begun working on a project about the farmers that supply the NYC greenmarkets. I've only just scratched the surface but I've already met some of the most lovely people. Ingie and Tema Kjarval, (photos 2 and 3) of Spring Lake Farm raise pastured pork and beef (4) and sell it at markets all over the city. Anna Janiszewsk's dad, John, (5) raises tilapia in a giant tank and filters the water through the plants in the greenhouse and back into the tank. Dr. Ken Jaffe of Slope Farms (7) raises beef and is doing amazing research on the overuse of antibiotics in livestock amongst other things.

It's amazing to see how these farmers create a space where livestock essentially feed themselves; they eat grass, they poop and fertilize the pasture, they move to another field, the grass grows back in the previous pasture and the cycle goes on.  It's a completely natural process compared to the big system of feedlot farms that use chemical fertilizers, antibiotics and tons of fuel. Plus, it all happens within a few hours of New York City. It makes sense to me that we should support the resources we have nearby and keep money flowing in a local market instead of buying meat and having no idea where it came from, whats in it or how it got here.