Women have always been a big part of JuanCarlos Gonzalez’s life.

Raised by a single mother in Puerto Rico, he saw the hard work his mother put in raising children, getting food on the table and trying to keep a job.

Now living in Vermont, he’s found a kinship with many of the state’s female farmers. In photos, his “Vermont Female Farmers” project focuses on the meaningful and impactful contributions female farmers make to the state’s culture, identity and economy, but who may often get overlooked.

An unexpected connection

Originally from Maunabo, Puerto Rico, Gonzalez didn’t grow up on a farm. As he puts it, he grew up in the “projects,” but he experienced farm life on weekend trips to his grandmother’s house.

His late mother wanted to be a nurse, but the only way she could take classes was on Saturdays. So, every weekend, she took Gonzalez to her mother’s house where he would stay overnight.

“My grandmother used to have some cows, some vegetables, plantains and so forth. We used to help her on that end,” he says.

EDUCATOR AND FARMER: Heather Darby walks a wheat field on a farm in Vermont. Darby is an agronomy educator with the University of Vermont. She is also the co-owner of The Darby Farm, a 130-acre diversified farm in the Lake Champlain islands.

Gonzalez remembers his mother and grandmother laughing when people would visit the small farm and ask where the “man in charge” was.

“My grandmother would get upset and say, ‘What makes you think that it’s a guy in charge?’ So that always stuck with us, and it stuck with me particularly,” he says.

A few years ago, Gonzalez, who relocated to Vermont, was having dinner with his husband at a local farm-to-table restaurant in Woodstock, Vt. At a table next to theirs, people were asking who the guys who raised the vegetables and meat for their dishes were.

“So that was like a flashback where I looked at my husband and said, ‘Well, that was crazy,’ and it literally reminded me of how I grew up,” he says.

Highlighting farmers

From that dinner date, Gonzalez got the idea to highlight women farmers in his new home state.

“I came up with the idea that I think there is a way to amplify the women in the agricultural industry, and I've always had a passion for photography," he says.

The project started with 10 farmers. But it eventually grew to document 45 farmers, some of whom he followed from planting season all the way to harvest. It took two-and-a-half years to complete.

Now a roving art exhibit, “Vermont Female Farmers,” showcases the farmers — from a saffron grower to crop and livestock growers — in black and white and color photos. In photographing these farmers at work in their daily lives, he attempts to center their livelihood, labor and passion for farming.

KEEPING THINGS SMALL: Liz Guenther of Three Cow Creamery in Cornith, Vt., runs a small, closed dairy of 12 to 14 Jersey-Devon cross cows. She hand-milks about seven cows and makes raw milk English and French cheeses.

Gonzalez says getting to know these farmers reminded him of how tough it was growing up. His single mother got government support and raised children, all while trying to improve her education to become a nurse.

"It is really hard to farm, and it's really expensive, but also sometimes the income received isn’t sufficient to run a farm unless you're a big, mega farm," he says. “All those things kind of resonated with me, where it was constantly on the go growing up.

“When I started putting all this together, it just reminded me so much of my upbringing. All the hard work that my mom would put into everything that people don’t see. People think that a farmer simply plants stuff, gets it out to the market, collects the money and end of story. But there is so much that goes into it," he adds.

With photos, Gonzalez says he was limited in the amount of storytelling he could do on each farm. So, he put together a companion book that includes excerpts from the farmers talking about why they farm and how they do it.

 “It’s not just that they do it for the heck of it,” he says. “They believe, and they're passionate about it.”

Gonzalez has traveled extensively, from Madagascar to India and South America. He’s taken thousands of photos, mostly vacation pictures, that change with the setting. This project, he says, is his most extensive and personal to date.

"One thing that I remember from my childhood is that we were always so happy,” he says. “We never lacked from having a good time with friends, having a good time helping my grandmother. So that part sort of resonated with me growing up because these farmers, every single farmer that I met, wasn't doing what they do because they were making a huge living out of it. They were doing it with a smile on their face. It was just fascinating.”

See for yourself

The roving exhibit was first shown last summer at the Billings Farm Museum in Woodstock, Vt. It is now at the Bennington Museum and will move to the Vermont State House in Burlington from August to November. It will then move to the Fleming Museum of Art at the University of Vermont in early 2025.

The exhibit, featuring 45 images, cost Gonzalez more than $50,000 of his own money to create.

“There’s so many farmers out there that would love to be part of it. I just don’t have the resources to do it out of pocket,” he says.

But he welcomes potential sponsors or partners that would be interested in growing the project and possibly taking it out of state.

Even in his hometown of Maunabo, local residents have taken notice. Last year, Gonzalez got an email from the town mayor, asking him for images and inviting him back to the island for a celebration to start the Christmas season.

Little did he know that he was going to be honored at the town’s official tree-lighting ceremony.

"So, it was like crazy. It was a huge thing that I was not expecting,” Gonzalez says. “There were thousands of people in the square, so it was really cool to see that. Kind of coming back to your town and being recognized.”

For more information on Vermont Female Farmers, visit vermontfemalefarmers.com.

To get a sense of the number of female farmers in Vermont and their impacts on farming operations, we put together the following graphic based on data from the most recent USDA Census of Agriculture: