Welcome to the Pasture

It's finally here... After a couple of months of planning and work, I am proud to announce the launch of my new micro-site, The Picture Pasture.

The Picture Pasture was designed an an exclusive home for my huge collection of agriculture and rural lifestyle imagery. As time goes on, all of the ag imagery at www.russellgraves.com will be gone and all of it will live on the new site.

While www.picturepasture.com is now fully functional with over 1,200 images on-line, watch for the number to grow exponentially over the next couple of weeks as I work diligently to upload new and fresh content.

For those who have used russellgraves.com a bunch, you'll find that The Picture Pasture's keyword based system makes finding images easy. Furthermore, the ability to build and send lightboxes makes this search system easy and intuitive.

If you haven't worked with a search system like this before, the system works pretty simple.

Say that you are looking for images of an angus

Simple... Just type angus into the search box.

But wait, you decide you want to see some images of angus calves, then use the advanced search feature and select the "Match all keywords" checkbox and click SEARCH.

There you have it. To make your selections, click the check box beneath each image to save your images in the lightbox. Then to view your lightbox, look at the top of the page and click the "My Lightbox" link.

From there, you can mail the lightbox around to fellow project collaborators or to me in order to have the hi-res images placed on a private link and ready for download.

It is that simple...

So take a look around, and welcome to The Pasture.

Cade

I've known Cade for a while now and though I am well acquainted with him, I've never spent much time with him at his job.

Cade is in his early twenties and he is doing something most unusual for his age - he is a full time farmer.

The United States Bureau of Labor Statics cites that of the 285 million people living in the United States less than 1% claim farming as an occupation. And of those 1% that are farmers, the median age is 55 - over thirty years older than Cade.

So with a positive attitude, Cade breaks ground a new cotton crop for 2009.

Farming is tough anywhere but farming cotton in the vertical strip of Texas real estate between the 100th meridian and the Caprock Escarpment tests anyone's mettle and resolve due to the fickleness of the wind, hail storms, and rain. So much of this year is reminiscent of what I've read about this part of the country in the 1930's during the Dust Bowl and the depression. Economically tough times coupled with an oppressive drought might make anyone give up. However, the red dirt is part of Cade as he grew up in a farming family just outside of Tell, Texas.

So as this growing season passes, I plan on finding out more about what makes someone so young stake a small financial fortune each year against market volatility and weather. And documenting him every step of the way.

Stay tuned...