A beautiful and active morning at the farm harvesting lettuce mix and mustard greens.
These are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
New carrots growing happily. It’s amazing that all of these plants start as tiny seeds.
These are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
Had an exciting and harrowing sailing adventure this past weekend with Brenton, the owner of JBG. Learned a few things!
When vegetables bolt they become unusable in their typical form but can create a beautiful spring display until they are mowed down to make room for the next..
These are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
Lot’s of new growth at the farm after loosing so much to the winter storm!
These are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
It’s quite amazing to me that the farm where I work was still able to have a transplant sale just one week after the crazy winter storm we had here in Texas. Someone had to brave the cold and ice to visit the greenhouses and keep all of the plants watered and warm. Amazing! A lot of hard work went into preparing for this event. Here are a few images from last weekend. I always like to try to capture kids shopping with their parents. They are cute and are it seems starting off life on the right foot, with gardening!
As you probably experienced yourself or saw on the news, Texas had an unprecedented winter storm during week 7 of this year. I was stuck at home frozen in like most and did not make my bi-weekly visit to JBG to take photos that week. Everyone was talking about the crop damage and I was interested and nervous to see it for myself. This first set of images show some hope and the activity most of the harvesters will be tasked at for many weeks while we wait for the crops that survived to recover and for the new crops being planted now to grow. That is harvesting the 50-100 beds of carrots that seem to have made it through just fine. And thanks to some dedicated employees the transplants in the greenhouse were saved and protected.
Here are a few images to show the extent of the damage to most all of the above ground plants. Definitely a huge loss for a farm.
Since most of the grocery store shelves were stripped bare of fresh and refrigerated items during and after the storm, the farmers markets were completely swamped with customers stocking up on produce that first weekend of thawing and nice weather.
These are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
Every once in a while I get lucky and catch a gorgeous sunrise at the farm.
Here are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
Heavy rain at the farm and me without proper rain gear forced me to hide out in a truck for a while!
Here are a few of my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, or Johnson’s Backyard Garden, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for over 10 years!
Rainbow Chard
So hard to choose! Out of the over 10,000 images I captured in 2020 for JBG Organic, these are a few of my favorites, that share some of the stories of the hard work and dedication of the 100 people that make it all happen. The farm is just east of Austin and is almost 200 acres. I’ve been a farm photographer for over 10 years, and it’s definitely been one of the best jobs I’ve ever had.
Here are my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for 10 years!
Here are my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for 10 years!
iPhone panorama from the top of a farm box truck. Those rows of crops need some height!
The JBG Organic farm has been looking great this year. The recent freeze did some damage, but overall the crops are still in great shape. As much as I love the chaos and randomness of nature, I admit I am also very drawn to the uniformity and visual pallet of agriculture. And to capture that I quite often will climb on top of a truck, tractor, or stack of pallets, to get a higher perspective. This place is almost 200 acres so getting above it allows for an enhanced view of the size and the seemingly endless rows.
One of the images that I create for Johnson’s Backyard Garden every week is called the box photo. It is intended to illustrate to the CSA members what they might be getting in their share. Here is a description from the JBG website that describes what the CSA is if you are not familiar.
“What is Community Supported Agriculture?
On Tuesday’s you can often find me arranging veggies near the ground and then perched high atop of a 6ft ladder hovering my camera over that week’s gorgeous harvest. After many years of feedback from customers, this seems to be one of their favorite images of mine to see on the JBG website. It has definitely evolved over the years. Here are a few recent ones that I think turned out pretty good.
Photo of me in the cabbage patch by Brenton Johnson, owner of the farm.
Harvesting Lemongrass
Here are my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for 10 years!
Beautiful morning at Johnson’s Backyard Garden. A blue sky and rows and rows of carrots.
Here are my bi-weekly photos from JBG Organic, the Austin based vegetable farm where I have been a photographer for 10 years!
As I have shared in previous blog posts, I am the photographer for a large organic farm in Central Texas. Johnson’s Backyard Garden, mostly referred to as JBG, has been a source of income, taking pictures and delivering veggies, for over 10 years. It was started in the founder's backyard in East Austin and has grown to almost 200 acres outside of town. It’s been a great job and I am very grateful to everyone who works there for all of their hard work and passion to provide high-quality food.
Typically I visit the farm every two weeks to document all the goings-on and to get some fresh air. The images are used for their website, marketing materials, brochures and cards, and of course social media. It seems as though the farm has somewhat of a cult following online and I think some of that can be attributed to their popular hats, but also to the consistently good quality images that people seem to enjoy. It’s nice to be able to show everyone what it looks like and how it works, all year long. So stay tuned every few weeks and I will share some of my favorite images from my most recent visit. Thanks!
Praying Mantis - Mantis religiosa - Carnivore
Every two weeks early on Tuesday morning I go to JBG Organic to take photos of the farm. I’m sure I have logged millions of steps, positioning myself all over that almost 200-acre piece of land over the last 10 years. 100,000’s of photos, from every position and waypoint, down on the ground looking up from the vantage point of a pattypan squash to over 20ft in the air after carefully climbing onto the roof of a box truck. From the coldest ice-encrusted day to the hottest sweat drenching August heatwave.
This week, possibly for the first time as far as I can remember, I crossed paths with a Praying Mantis. Now at first, this might not seem like a special event, but earlier this year I had an experience that in my mind, connected me to this creature forever. And right before this encounter, I had just been texting a friend about this blog post-challenge, which is something I have been feeling urged to do for many months. Maybe signs, maybe not. I don’t mind a little magical thinking.
On March 25, 2017, my father passed, a year and a half after he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). After he was gone I considered getting my first tattoo, to commemorate him in the same way my younger cousin commemorated our grandparents. By putting their signatures on the inside of his biceps. I resolved to do the same and my stepmother provided me with some samples of my Dad’s from a 1974 hunting license and a bank statement. I combined the best parts of both and I was ready.
It’s a pretty small tattoo so it was not that painful at all. I’m still glad I have it and I’m grateful I found the perfect person for my first time. The whole experience was almost enjoyable. What happened next is somewhat bizarre. I left the tattoo shop, got into my car, and there staring at me was a Praying Mantis sitting on the top of my passenger seat. My eyes got big and my mind raced through all of the inexplicable ways this insect could have gotten into my car. I felt at that moment it was a sign from my dad or somehow related to him and the tattoo. Maybe a thumbs up at the gesture? Maybe a sign that he is OK? No telling.
The history of symbolism related to Mantids is very old and elaborate. When I searched online for some meaning the first website I came to spoke of the mantis being a hunter and the qualities of patience, stillness, and a kind of stoicism. What I read resonated with me as I thought about my father and who he was. I’m still in disbelief and don’t quite know what to think about it.
I regret this decision, but I decided to gingerly remove my passenger and left them in the parking garage. Not the best environment. Did I ruin the magic of the moment? Who knows. But a few weeks later, after not having anything related to my Dad in any way cross my consciousness, something uncommon that I can't recall now came up, and that day a dead mantis fell from the trunk of my car upon opening at the grocery store. Again, how did that get there, and was it the same one?
Here is an extra fun story if you have time. So I come across this mantis at the farm and I’m just in awe. What other insect looks at you and stands its ground with such bold awareness and intelligence? I can’t think of any.
That very mantis, pictured at the top of this post, was sitting on a leaf of a red cabbage plant. We were checking each other out and I noticed it was somewhat hiding below a spider web. And then I saw the spider. Why not wait a few minutes to see if anything happens. Moving away a few feet allowed the mantis to ignore me and focus on its next meal.
In the center of the web was this dime-sized spider waiting for his prey, unknowingly about to become prey themself. It was only maybe five minutes and the spider ran out to the edge of its web to grab some poor flying insect just entangled. As soon as the spider returned to its center resting spot to enjoy its catch, the mantis made its move. Even though I was staring right at it, the action was so fast as to be imperceptible to my eyes. 2 for 1, the mantis got a spider and its short-lived lunch.
With the manual focus assist of my camera, I was able to watch very close up as the mantis proceed to dismantle and devour the feast clutched in the tibial spines of its raptorial front legs. The movements of its mouthparts were a horrendous sight as they all seemed to be working out of sync but with ravenous purpose. Spider leg after leg was swallowed as you would holding a single long-cooked spaghetti noodle above your head and slowly lowering it down into your gullet. And in very short order it was over.
