Each winter, when much of America is preparing to celebrate the holidays, dozens of migrant farmers are headed south to begin the tree-planting season in East Texas. These workers are self-sustaining and bring with them their own shelter, kitchens, and tools. Moving from clear-cut to clear-cut for three months each year they plant trees in a grid, day in and day out.
The sustainability of this process is up for debate, but it is widely agreed among campfire talks that harvesting a planted forest is better than the alternative: deforesting what little old growth is left. While some rookies struggle to plant 250 trees per day, veteran planters sometimes plant 2,000. With Sowing the Forests, I am documenting these tree planters and the landscapes they temporarily inhabit to increase my understanding of them.
