Ground Truth
Photo essays from the field, for the people who tell agriculture’s stories.
Ground Truth is an ongoing collection of photo essays documenting the people working to keep farming, and the land it depends on, alive.
From a multi-generational land transfer on the Kitsap Peninsula, to a Hmong farmer's return to the family business after leaving it behind, to a small Lewis County bakery working to keep locally grown food in its own community — each story spotlights the relationships, land, and labor that rarely make it in front of a camera.
Finding Farmland and a Family
In Port Orchard, Washington, Ann Gilman farms land she doesn't own, leased from Bob and Donna Gilby, the retired couple working to keep it in production long after they're gone. Produced for American Farmland Trust's LANDED podcast, this photo essay documents what an unconventional, non-family farm succession looks like day to day — and what it takes for near-strangers to trust each other with land that took a lifetime to build.
Mak’s Garden
Mak Lee grew up on her family's farm and left it for a career in Seattle's food industry — until the work nearly cost her everything. This essay follows her return home to Ethel, Washington, and the two-acre farm she built from her family's Hmong farming legacy, now feeding a growing partnership with a local barbecue truck.
Shona’s Café - Keeping Lewis County Food in Lewis County
Shona's Café, a Slow Food Snail of Approval micro-bakery in Chehalis, sources nearly every ingredient from farms and ranches inside Lewis County. This essay traces that sourcing chain — a cattle ranch, a pastured-pork farm, a family creamery, and a microgreen grower — and the quiet argument it makes for rural food security.
