A Story Behind a Photograph

I'll set the scene for you-- it's a midsummer night, the kind that's not too sticky and feels way too comfortable for it to be the middle of July. The girls and I had just finished 'putting up corn' with the rest of the farm wives at my in-laws home located at the main farm. We were all sticky from spending our day husking corn, cutting corn and bagging corn. It was turning into a late night for the girls, an hour past bedtime- but as I'm trying to hurry them into my SUV to take them home and scrub them down they see my husband pull into the driveway and up to the barn. It was his night to do 'barn check'. Well, off they go, one barefoot and wearing a dress and the other one in muck boots that were a size too big. As I reach the barn just a few strides behind them, the lights in the maternity pen and office are all turned on and shining against the dark sky. I stop and look around to see what it is that has made these two balls of energy so quiet and so still. Well, sure enough, there is my husband in the pen, right in the middle of delivering a newborn baby calf. They are so intrigued, so captivated and once they were in that moment it was impossible to pull them away.

I quickly knew that our already long day was going to stretch on into the night. After the calf was safely delivered they just stood there and watched as the mama took care of her, washing her, nudging her and standing guard. Meanwhile, Aaron was following his post-delivery protocol and getting everything ready for the calf, he milked the mama, tended to her needs and sent her on her way once she was no longer interested. After a few minutes, he joins us again and plants himself in the soft sawdust with the girls, armed with two bottles in his hands. He starts to teach them how to feed the calf. Needless to say, they were living their best life that night, the minutes passed by, the hours seem to fly by unnoticed and soon after the calf was settled into her stall we all made our 30-second drive home over the hill. Everyone was bathed and clothed and tucked in all while recounting every single second of that night, giggling, smiling and asking Aaron about a million and ten questions. I honestly can't recall, in my entire life, many more nights that were more fulfilling than that one. I still look at this image and think of those after dusk moments, I can still feel the cool steel of the gates under my arms as I stood at the birthing pen watching the four of them, I can feel that cool breeze and I can still smell the corn that we were all plastered in.

This photo is one that I've always wanted to do something special with but the quality of it was never that great, it's slightly grainy and gets distorted when blown up. Then, in walks Melissa Munger, an extremely talented and self-taught artist from Alabama. She has a service where people send her pictures of sweet and special moments that aren't quite hangable yet, the image is either blurry, the coloring is wrong or you would like something unsightly removed from the image, she then creates something that you would be proud to display.

Melissa Munger - Portraits & Miniatures


The original photograph: