Winter at the Island Dairy Farm
I am currently doing an internship where I go along on interviews with dairy farmers. The interviews take place in the areas around Leiden, and I help document the interviews for later use in a play and an exhibition about the subject. I usually photograph while another student films the interviews and the surrounding environment.
The first interview I went on, in early February, was during a really cold period, and a lot of the canals and smaller rivers in Holland were frozen. The dairy farm we visited was on a small island that only contained the farm, a home, and a few out buildings. The day we came, the ice surrounding the farm had been broken, but hadn’t melted. The farmers said that before the ice had been broken, they had to walk across it to get to the shore. And there was also a period of time where the ice was too hard to break but too thin to walk on, so they couldn’t leave. Usually the only way to get to the island is by boat. They have a small boat for transporting people and a large one for supplies and things for the farm.
There is a certain amount of isolation inherent in living on an island, but especially on such a small one. You have to rely on your own abilities and supplies are limited. You have to be willing and able to face things alone. When the majority of your life-home and work-are contained on a tiny area of land your world becomes so much smaller.
Being on an island means that you are tangibly separated from the rest of the world. Even though this is also true if you live at the edge of a large desert or next to the mountains, there is something particularly isolating about being surrounded by a large amount of water. Maybe it’s the fact that you need something besides your own body to be able to leave. If the land is farther away than where you can swim unaided, or if the water is so cold that swimming in it is not possible, then leaving requires some outside means. And that makes you separate and contained.
