The 41st State: Brutal Farmers of Montana (16 photos)

If you think of farm life as a peaceful, serene experience, far removed from the hustle and bustle of life, check out this series of photographs by American photographer Cynthia Matty Huber. She has always had a particular affinity for the rustic farm lifestyle. The photographer shows what life on an American ranch is really like.





Cynthia Matty Huber has long admired the rough and tumble lifestyle of ranchers. She took these photographs over the course of three years, traveling throughout Montana. For the past year, she has been working with just one person. John Hoyland's family arrived in Montana in 1906. John spent his entire life on the farm.



When his parents died, all the farm work fell to him—John became the sole owner of the farm.

Today, Hoyland himself is quite old, and daily work on his several hundred-hectare estate is becoming increasingly difficult.



Despite the hard work, John is happy and can't imagine himself anywhere else but his native ranch.



Cynthia's work shatters the stereotype of a ranch as a quiet life away from the hustle and bustle. She shows how difficult and tiring it is to tend to a 380-hectare property every day. But leaving is also impossible—after all, they've called this land home for 100 years, and there's no other home.



However, the realism of the photographs doesn't kill the romance of rural life—just look at the landscapes and don't even say you wouldn't like to drive through these endless, melancholic fields at least once.





The series also includes photographs of other farmers, which the photographer took as part of her project.