January 1, 2020 - By Kevin Hecteman - A first-generation rancher from Yuba County earned the Grand Prize in the 38th annual California Farm Bureau Federation Photo Contest. Kathy Brimmer won $1,000 for a photo of her husband feeding cattle on their property near Smartsville, as the sun set behind the Sutter Buttes.

Although Brimmer and her husband, John, had children active in FFA where they lived previously, they didn't go into farming full time until moving to the Smartsville area in 2014 to raise cattle. One evening, while helping her husband feed the animals, Kathy Brimmer saw this scene and grabbed her smartphone.

"We have some phenomenal sunsets up here," she said. "Sometimes I feel like we're living in Hawaii."

The 2019 CFBF Photo Contest attracted hundreds of images from amateur photographers who are members of county Farm Bureaus or supporters of the California Bountiful Foundation. Nine of the 12 top finishers were first-time contest winners.

Cindy Lohse of Orland garnered First Place and $500 for a photo of a red barn in a field of bright-yellow sunflowers; Second Place and $250 went to Angels Camp resident Mindy Rasmussen, who submitted a photo of water trickling down an irrigation canal. Andrea Traphagan of Ravendale won Third Place and $100 for a sepia-tone image of her husband inspecting test plantings of grain.

Six photographers earned Honorable Mentions and $50 each. In the Budding Artists category, the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom presented awards of $250 and $100 to photographers ages 13 and younger.

The remaining prize-winning photos are published in this issue of Ag Alert^®, beginning on Page 10, and will appear on CFBF websites and social media pages.

Imagine all the photos…The lenses of many capture California's land of plenty.

There's a First Prize, and there's a first-ever prize. As in, nine people were first-time winners in the annual California Farm Bureau Photo Contest, in which participants were asked to "Imagine California."

They didn't imagine—they saw: A farmer looking at a sunset while feeding hay to his cattle. A field of sunflowers. A humble but crucial irrigation valve. A small boy holding a chicken. A field of newly planted almond trees. And they captured the scenes for others to see.

The adults took home prizes of as much as $1,000. The Grand Prize photo, taken by Kathy Brimmer of Yuba County, is shown on Page 1.

The Budding Artists winners (photographers 13 and younger) have their own category, plus money for the piggy bank, thanks to the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom.

And they all have the opportunity to see their pictures in print.

First Place

Cindy Lohse
Glenn County
Lohse's daughter works for a seed company in Woodland, and Lohse was in town for lunch when the two visited one of the company's fields. "My favorite things are sunflowers and barns," Lohse said. "There just happened to be this beautiful field of sunflowers and this beautiful red barn."

Second Place

Mindy Rasmussen
Calaveras County
Rasmussen's husband and his brother run a cattle operation; the valve seen here irrigates pasture for those cattle near Angels Camp and needs to be turned on every 10 days or so to let water in. "Water's an important issue right now," Rasmussen said. "So I thought it was kind of a cool, cool picture of the water coming down the canal."

Third Place

Andrea Traphagan
Lassen County
Traphagan and her husband, Tom, are first-generation alfalfa and grain growers and are about to start a mill near Ravendale. He was out one day inspecting test plantings of grains when his wife captured the scene. The mill, she said, "has been a longtime dream he's had forever. I'm so thankful that we've been able to get that dream to come to life."

Honorable Mentions

Amy Blagg
San Joaquin County
Blagg and her family were visiting her parents for Easter when her youngest son, Oliver, headed for the chicken coop. "He's my animal lover," Blagg said. "He likes to go collect the eggs at Grandma and Grandpa's house any chance he gets. He picks up all of the chickens all of the time."

Kevin Robertson
Kings County
With tomato harvest in full swing in his fields near Corcoran, Robertson recruited a little extra help: his 3-year-old son, Eamon. "We brought him to the farm with me in the morning to look at the tomato harvest and teach him about tomatoes," Robertson said. This is one of the candid photos he was able to grab with his smartphone when Eamon picked up a tomato.

Samantha Francis
Napa County
Francis' husband, a vineyard manager, was harvesting near Summit Lake when she went along in search of photo opportunities. "I really enjoy going out early morning or late night to get harvest shots," Francis said. "It was actually really foggy down in the valley, and you're so high up there that you're above the fog line." So she headed uphill, and as the sun came up, hopped in a truck bed and tripped the shutter.

Melissa Laney
Sutter County
Laney is a partner in a farming company that recently planted these almonds near Live Oak and the Sutter Buttes. In the course of her work, which includes managing the company website, she got out the camera. "That was one of the many that I took that day, because it was to me a beautiful scene," she said. Almonds are new for Laney, whose company grows peaches, walnuts and rice.

Marilyn Ferrante
Napa County
Ferrante, a wine educator by trade, was in the vineyard before dawn as the 2019 harvest got underway at O'Brien Estate in the Oak Knoll District. This woman was one of a crew of 15 picking sauvignon blanc grapes. "I just thought, without them or her, I wouldn't be able to sell wine for a living," Ferrante said.

Marti Hubbell
San Benito County
Hubbell calls this "A Texan Living in California," because the photo shows a purebred Texas longhorn on the Hollister ranch that's been in her husband's family for generations. "As you can see by the picture, he's magnificent," she said of T-Bone, her 9-year-old steer. "He's not mean or anything, but because he doesn't like his horns touched, we've never been able to measure him. But we've checked spots on the fence, and we think they're a little over 6 feet."

Budding Artists

First Place

Dottie Davis, 11 years old
Glenn County
Dottie said she wanted to take this photo last year but forgot. "One day we had some free time, and I went and asked my mom if I could grab hay hooks and gloves and climb on the haystack, and she let me," she said. That's what led to this picture on the family alfalfa farm near Orland.

Second Place

Mylee Decroix, 12 years old
Glenn County
"She's kind of new to farming, but she definitely loves photography," said Nate Kilmer, Mylee's stepfather, who grows almonds and olives near Orland. "She was just out and about on the farm one day, clicking away, and that's one that she really liked." This almond-blossom shot is Mylee's first photo contest entry.
Reprinted with permission: California Farm Bureau Federation