PortraitsFromRuralWisconsin01Open

[gentle music]

- Andy Soth: Picture rural Wisconsin, and for many, a familiar landscape emerges, one of farms with fertile fields, cornstalks, and cows. This landscape can be an idyllic image, but it doesn't reveal the ways many rural areas struggle today, as a slow economic recovery, population decline, and fleeing industry has led some to worry that a quickly changing world may be passing them by. How people's lives are affected by these many changes may be hidden in the landscape but revealed in personal stories, in portraits, as in these Portraits from Rural Wisconsin. 
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The portraits you're about to see and the people you'll meet come from a yearlong search for stories, stories about rural Wisconsin and the challenges its small farmers, small-business owners, and small-town residents are facing and the ways they're meeting them. 
[tranquil music]

The portraits come from travels across western Wisconsin up and down its winding roads on an alphabet of highways, through summer, fall, winter, and spring. I met people working hard to improve their communities and people whose hard work might not be enough to keep their farms.

- Heather Wittig: Some way. I just didn't know how.

- As you'll see, their stories are varied, but they all share a single sentiment.

- Rural life is still the best life there is. 
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