Butler-Dunbar Farm
Ours is a nation founded by farmers, and maybe more so than any other. History books teach of founding fathers, pioneers and revolutionaries, yet each were farmers before anything else, had to be for our new world to survive. I don't know that any single image, by itself, can ever convey that core American spirit, the spirit of farming, but the slide show below is as close as we can come to sharing our experience on Dawn's farm. We passed only briefly over the ground Jeff Dunbar poured his life into, through fields he planted and among animals he raised, yet long enough to see his hand upon everything, feel his presence infused in all we surveyed. Although we live in the shadow of his life, we were blessed to have stood a moment in the light of his legacy. We heard the distant rumble of the tractor on the breeze, the contented murmuring of cows, smelled the fresh-cut hay... and felt the essence of farming, the spirit of the farmer, whether our cameras captured that or not. I only pray that, in some small way, perhaps we've honored his memory.
