Horse Collar Farm; NC Farmer Voices, Alix Blair
Thanks to The Southern Foodways Alliance blog for leading us to learn more about North Carolina Farmer Voices, a program sponsored by Rural Advancement Foundation International that tells the story, through video and still photography, of a number of "innovative farmers:"
North Carolina Farmer Voices [is] a project of RAFI-USA and its Tobacco Communities Reinvestment Fund. This program assists farmers and community groups in developing new sources of agricultural income through the provision of cost-share grants.
In this website you’ll find a collection of stories—in photographs, sound, and multimedia—about projects that are leading models for agriculture in North Carolina. These farmers are innovators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners on the frontier of agricultural innovation. We believe the wisdom of farmers is one of the most powerful tools we have to bring economic growth to North Carolina. Explore their stories!
The site offers 15 short documentary clips that combine the gorgeous photography of Alix Blair with the voices of the farmers themselves. Ms. Blair's photography galleries on NC Farmer Voices are also well worth exploring--both from a compositional sense, and for the story and the spirit of her subjects. Below, Sammy Koenigsberg of New Town Farms discusses his family's work and the poultry processing facility that a RAFI-USA grant helped to be built on-site:
