I drive all the way up to a huge enclosure that had some 20-25 jersey cows and some bulls; a really tall and thick-set middle aged swarthy guy was staring intently at me. I park my car and walk up to him, the skeptic soon disappears when I introduce myself as a photojournalist (who doesn’t want his picture in the papers, eh?).
He told me how he had lived all his life on this farm since he was born here and how south-Texas had molded him. I was educated on how cows are bred on pastures for 11-12 months before they are beefy enough for slaughter and that race-horses are “laid-down” after their peak performance gives them serious injuries, amongst many other simple things of farming. I took some pictures of few mules and horses from close range and under the farmer’s supervision entered the bull pen to take pictures of the cows. The cows had obviously not seen a camera before and buckled wildly, after sitting in the pen calmly for 10 minutes I was able to gain their confidence to take some pictures.
The farmer was good enough to take me to another farm of his a few miles away, which was stunningly picturesque. It was straight out of Yash Chopra’s films and I was surprised to see this in Texas.
The old farmer said that this piece of land belonged to his family since 3 generations and they had a horse-driven cart which was from the late 1800’s. After driving out from the ranch, I hit a really small and sleepy town and realized I was in a place called McDade. Anyway, here are some pictures, hope you enjoy them. The pictures were taken on film, with a Minolta T100 and a Minolta 50 mm lens. Unfortunately, the home made scans are poor quality, the prints are far better.
