About This Project
Modern American farmers face a wide range of issues and concerns. Twelve contemporary Northwest artists explore these evolving agricultural practices and the emergence of a new rural ecological aesthetic on twelve farms in this challenging exhibit. What is being done to preserve and conserve natural resources and heritage, while making allowances for the needs of a fast growing population, is revealed and addressed through art and written dialog. The project is a joint venture with the American Farmland Trust and is being sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, West Coast Wealth Advisors and New Seasons Market.
This piece is a visual description of the accumulation of Kim and Randy’s Mower’s days spent milking cows every morning an afternoon at their Skagit Valley dairy farm. Each card in the library catalogue is made of recycled fabric, dipped in beeswax, and represents one day of milking every morning and every afternoon. Randy Mower has not spent a night away form the farm since the Mowers started their operation 24 years ago.
On my first visit to the farm, I arrive in the middle of a 4H Club meeting. About 20 kids are gathered around four cows as they learn to judge the “dairiness”” of a Brown Swiss Cow. Kids are describing the angularity, ranking the flatness of this one’s ribs, that one’s median suspensary ligament cleft. Bones of Brown Swiss cattle have been found in ruins in Switzerland that date back to 4000 BC. Randy Mower tells me that this herd has been together for almost 100 years. Kim and Randy and their three sons have been on the 240-acre farm outside Hamilton, Washington since 1974, and have had their dairy since 1977.
On that visit, I was overwhelmed by how much WORK the Mowers did. They milk 120 cows every day at 3:30 am and again at 3:30 pm. Each milking takes about four hours. This is only a small portion of their workday, and only a small portion of their dedication to farming. Watching Kim milk is like watching choreography. Her movements have a rhythm. She swings her arm to grab a pipe above the parlor floor, jumps up to the level of the cows, then reverses her motion back down, then wipe wipe wipe.
As it grows dark I’m ready to leave for the night. Kim invites me over for Sunday breakfast the next day. Can I show up at 5:30 am? The next morning I am welcomed into their house for the first time. Kim looks around at the disorder and without apology explains that this is a farmhouse and they spend very little time indoors. We sit down for a breakfast of waffles, applesauce, strawberries and yogurt. Do you eat like this every Sunday I ask? No, she replies, every morning. The waffles are made from a sourdough starter and she grinds the wheat for them. The applesauce is made from their apples and the berries were frozen from last year’s crop.
On another visit Kim is working on her koi pond. She’s setting up a pump that will kill the bad bacteria and installing a filter that uses UV rays to do this. She loves having these interesting fish to care for, look at, and enjoy. She’s raised unique varieties of chickens and studies genetics. Genetics plays a part in managing their herd, too. The Mowers keep meticulous records on all their cattle. They study magazines that characterize the attributes of certain bulls and then decide which sperm to buy for insemination. They know when to inseminate by watching the cows’ behavior. Everything is in constant rotation. Cows are brought in to be milked. Cows are coming into heat. Cows are giving birth. Calves are fed, given antibiotics, given colostrums, given grain. Barns are being swept out. Hay is being gathered.
As we come home from a trip to the grocery store, Kim says, “I am mystified.”” She pauses. In a louder, more insistent voice she says, “I am just mystified by where food comes from when I see it on the shelf in the grocery store.” She has an intense curiosity about everything, but I think she must have a pretty good idea about where food comes from. After all, she raises and slaughters chickens and harvest multiple varieties of grapes, apples, pumpkins, chard, garlic, onions, peas, walnuts, potatoes, and filberts. She raises bees for honey. And that’s just what I have seen in my 12 days with the Mowers. There is more, and it never stops.
Every two days, the Mowers produce 11,500 pounds of milk. Their average daily production is 668.60 gallons, and the milk truck comes every other day to pick it up. On our way to lead the cows from the pasture to the parlor we pass the nut trees, grape arbor, rhododendrons, the pond filled with ducks and geese, the owl house, and as we pass through the gate into the pasture Kim looks down at the earth, spins with her arms held out and says, “It all comes from here.”