Madison County grower cultivates whimsy
Sarah Jones Decker’s “Tiny Ridge” continues to thrive.
Photo by Lauren Rutten
Tiny Ridge is an eclectic town. It’s a place where children play baseball on echinacea blooms, mountaineers climb tulip stalks, and lumberjacks log asparagus shoots. It’s a fictitious place, sure. But it feels very real to its creator, Sarah Jones Decker.
During the pandemic, Decker found herself spending more time at home on Root Bottom Farm, her family’s 10-acre holding in Madison County. Aching for a creative outlet, Decker imagined a Lilliputian locale lurking in her fields. She called the village Tiny Ridge as a nod to Piney Ridge, the road cutting through her property.
Over the next year, Decker staged and photographed more than 150 unique vignettes using 1:87 scale miniatures.
“Half the challenge was thinking of an idea and then finding a little character that could work,” says Decker, who has an MFA in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. “Sometimes the action of the figurine led the image narrative, while sometimes it came down to basic color theory. A yellow jacket sure looks good with a purple flower.”
Decker didn’t do the work alone, though. It was a family effort. Many days, her five-year-old daughter, Josephine, served as an assistant, holding the umbrella for the shots and carefully arranging the figures.
Decker’s husband, Morgan, helped with brainstorming. On a particularly inspiring morning, he jolted from a dead sleep to announce that he had dreamt of someone painting a tomato. “I found a set of tiny painters on eBay and shot it in our greenhouse the day they arrived in the mail,” says Decker.
The seasons inspired subject matter, too. When the garlic bulbs began growing long, twisty scapes in the heat of June, Decker grabbed her camera. When the strawberries turned ripe and red, she paused mid-harvest to snap a photo.
“It felt like there was always something new to shoot,” says Decker. “We have been farming on this land for over a decade, and the firsts are still exciting and magical.”
In November of 2022, Decker compiled the photos into the eponymous text, Tiny Ridge. It’s not her first book — she published The Appalachian Trail: Backcountry Shelters, Lean-tos, and Huts in 2020 and The Ridges of Madison County: Section Hiking the Appalachian Trail & Other Local Hikes in 2021. However, Tiny Ridge is certainly her most fanciful work, and the project continues to spark interest: It was picked up by the leading art-and-pop-culture site Bored Panda last fall.
“When I was little, I always loved illustrated books that didn’t have any words. The story changed every time,” Decker remembers. “I chose not to have my words associated with the images in this book so everyone could bring their own imagination to it.”
In that way, Decker wants the series to spark joy in readers. “It makes me think about my great-grandmother who used to say, ‘If you want to see a smile in the world, bring yours with you,’” Decker muses. “This is my smile.”
Sarah Jones Decker, Madison County. To learn more, visit rootbottomfarm.com and sarahjonesdecker.com.