Keith drives down Fox Avenue in Sac County, Iowa. __________________________________________ ”It never completely gets dark on those back roads. There are stars, deceptively few. And velvet consumes and velvet erupts: the softness is the leaves and the dirt paths and stables and skin. And eyes. The dark places, the secret places: abrupt, always, fleeting but indelibly there, like a muscle memory. The ridiculous and impudent course of years means nothing: the touch is the same, the taste. Iowa's sweet ground. I close my eyes to the darkness and fall into it more and awake to the street disappearing into fields and lost time.” an excerpt from the poem Iowa by Robbie Klein After spending our first months of the pandemic in Syracuse, New York, my partner Emily and I made our way to her family farm outside of Schaller, Iowa. These photographs are a visual diary of our time in relative paradise to our small apartment: amongst her hard-working family, friends and the lush green rows of corn and beans that stretch as far as your eyes can see.⁣

Sweet corn and field corn plants stretch across the northern field at the Kenny family farm.

Joe hits a clay pigeon with a 12-gauge after it was thrown by his partner, Emily.

Mary holds her granddaughter Jacey on Dru Kenny’s cattle farm.

Tire tracks are burned into the road leading to Galva.

A crop sprayer prepares to spray a row of crops.

Joe prepares to smoke out of a homemade device while Emily drinks a beer.

A pit on the Boyle farm in Ida Grove.

Keith holds a sweet corn tassel.

Cows roam the pasture on the Boyle family farm.

Emily rests on the couch of an RV camper.

Stars line the sky at Maggie and Landon’s house in Sutherland. Image was made with a three-second exposure by dragging the camera downward.