It’s a chilly Spring morning at a Lexington dairy farm. Farmer Kenya Abraham walks through the pasture and calls to Merigold the cow. Abraham encourages Merigold to move toward the creamery where the milking is done.
“They love to come up for milking. It’s like treat time. We don’t give them grain. They’re fed alfalfa pellets, but it’s a treat for them to get that,” says Abraham.
The 51-year-old Abraham said her operation is a micro-dairy where raw milk is produced.
“We are definitely not a big dairy production that you see on commercial operations. We milk one cow at a time in here. When you come in, especially to that milking parlor, you leave everything right here at your car. I just ask that you do that. Allow yourself to engage with the process and with what’s going on, the rhythm of this life. That’s what we do when we come into this space,” explained Abraham.
Abraham is being featured in a docuseries about women who farm. The dairy farmer is passionate about her work and talks about some of the challenges.
“Well, I’m not just a woman. I’m a Black, Muslim female as well. I’ve got what people would think of as a triple threat to some folks. It’s difficult in general to farm, but as a woman, you carry a lot of hats. I wear several scarves. I homeschool my children. I work from home. And I also farm, so just taking care of house, and being a mother, being a wife, and all the things. But this is where the sanctuary is for me,” said Abraham.
Photographer Erica Chambers is the creator of the docuseries she calls Dirt Pearls. Chambers said the traveling exhibit features videos of women farmers from Appalachia and down the road.
“The original idea was to go around and meet women farmers and take their pictures. And then I’d show up, and they had all these incredible stories, and it’s wisdom, and I couldn’t keep up. So, I started using my cell phone just to capture what they were saying. And I thought when I do these on exhibits, I will put maybe a quote by their picture and then it still didn’t do them justice. And so, this is how it kind of shifted from doing portraits to capturing them on my phone literally. And I would start uploading the behind-the-scenes footage because I wasn’t ready to release the photos. And people were like, When is this film coming out? Because they want to hear their story,” said Chamber.
Chambers, who lives in Berea, received a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women to begin this project. She says her intention is to focus on food justice, environmentalism, and the challenges women face on the farm. Along with dairy farmer Kenya Abraham, 27 other women have been videotaped by Erica Chambers. She shares comments from Melinda Wilder and Joana Amorim, both included in Dirt Pearls.
“This is just another way of being environmentalist is you raise your food locally, you raise it organic. You serve your community,” said Wilder.
“I just knew I wanted my career to be around plants and the natural world,” said Amorim.
“The common theme that I see with all of the women that I’m featuring in Dirt Pearls is that it’s community, over Capitalism. They’re not trying to make, you know, a lot of money. They’re trying to take care of their families, and their community and the land. They’re land stewards,” explained Chambers.
Erica Chambers says working on this project has been life-changing. She walks into the pasture with dairy farmer Kenya Abraham. Chambers uses the camera on her phone to zoom in on Abraham, who wears a gold hijab and teal t-shirt. Abraham talks about the emotion of milking a cow.
“ For me, I cry into the hip bone of a cow. I have a lot of stress, and it’s where I relieve myself. They just give back. They’re very giving animals. I love cows,” said Abraham.
Chambers said the project is evolving. Instead of releasing the docuseries as a complete project, she plans to release various segments over time at different film festivals.
