Life on the land

Af­ter be­ing in­spired by pho­tog­ra­phers doc­u­ment­ing COVID19, pho­tog­ra­pher Kelsie Hore thought the same should be done for Vic­to­ria’s dairy farm­ers.

Grow­ing up on a dairy farm at Leitchville and cur­rently em­ployed as a mar­ket­ing as­sis­tant at Ge­net­ics Aus­tralia, Kelsie knows all too well the hard work be­hind pro­duc­ing milk and she was de­ter­mined to show that par­tic­u­lar el­e­ment in the pho­tos she took as part of her #ViaTheFarmGate series.

‘‘COVID-19 has re­ally put ev­ery­thing into per­spec­tive and what bet­ter way to look at pos­i­tives then fea­tur­ing our es­sen­tial work­ers on their farms,’’ Kelsie said.

‘‘I re­ally wanted to keep the images raw and nat­u­ral to show this par­tic­u­lar side of farm­ing.’’

Putting the call out to farm­ers, Kelsie was sur­prised by the re­sponse.

‘‘It was a pretty last-minute de­ci­sion one week­end when I was home. I sim­ply sent out a dozen or so mes­sages and most of the farm­ers thought it was a great idea.

‘‘There are still a few farm­ers I didn’t cover purely due to time re­straints, but I do plan to get back and take some more in the Gan­nawarra area in the near fu­ture.’’

She said it was a nice change to get out­side and take some pic­tures.

‘‘Dairy farm­ers are deemed as es­sen­tial work­ers and are the fore­front of our lo­cal com­mu­nity and I be­lieve we don’t praise or recog­nise them enough,’’ she said.

‘‘Dairy farm­ers are deemed as es­sen­tial work­ers and are the fore­front of our lo­cal com­mu­nity and I be­lieve we don’t praise or recog­nise them enough,’’ she said.

‘‘I have been over­whelmed with the re­sponse and com­men­tary around the min­i­mum farms I have done so far and I am ex­cited to see what can come out of this go­ing for­ward.

‘‘It can be easy to be­come ab­sorbed into the neg­a­tiv­ity, and hav­ing the power to shed some light into what farm­ers do and the things they are grate­ful for like rain, growth, fam­i­lies, smiles and health and it is ex­tremely im­por­tant to cre­ate mem­o­ries to look back upon.’’

This article by Sophie Baldwin originally appeared in The Shepparton News.

To find out more about Kelsie's #ViaTheFarmGate project and put your name forward to be included in the second stage visit Kelsie Hore Photography & Design on Facebook or @kelsiehorephotography on Instagram.