The last few weeks we have been enjoying visiting local Cornish farmers to carry out further interviews and collect photographs and footage to help us make a series of digital stories for our forthcoming schools work. Digital stories are essentially short films (typically under 3 minutes) that feature the voice of storyteller (in our case a farmer) whilst showing you images (often belonging to the narrator) that illustrate what the person is talking about. They are great ways of making oral history interviews really accessible and effectively draw your attention to the story which is being told.
Routing through old box’s of photographs resulted in a lot of pictures of… cows! When a person does appear they are often with a cow or partly blocked by a cow! Still this provides an interesting history into the changing breeds that farmers have kept in the past. Many of the cows in photographs (though I am by no means an expert) seem to have much shorter legs and there are some impressive horns on some too.
Below includes (from top to bottom) Orien the Heriford pedigree 1964, Primrose and her 2 twins 1964, unknown, Primrose 1965, Greybird and calf 1966 and last but not least Ivan the stock bull, 1959.
