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I am Cecilia. A New Zealander who farms in Illinois.

My farms are organic and regenerative and full of stories. I have been writing here about environmentally sustainable farming and food and travel since 2011.

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LATEST POSTS


  • THE LADY PIG FARMER

    THE LADY PIG FARMER

    I did not set out to be a pig farmer but there you are. Yesterday when I was talking to the man who was going to reverse my trailer into a tight spot, I heard someone else say behind me, in a low voice, to someone I could not see “Oh,  that’s Cecilia. She’s the Lady…

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  • FRIED EGGS

    FRIED EGGS

    At last I am back on the farm! I have been out delivering hogs on the most awful roads. Usually this is a fifty   minute drive in the big truck hauling the stock trailer. But this morning about twenty minutes into the dawn drive, with three hogs in the trailer and two dogs sitting ramrod…

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  • IN HEAT

    IN HEAT

    Every now and then we have to talk of “country matters.” Molly came into heat yesterday and Manu was invited to “visit”. 

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  • REALITY

    REALITY

    Yesterday, when my new second-hand shelves arrived in three random boxes ready for me to put the shelves together without directions and with pieces missing, I thought how this would be a fun game to play on a Reality TV show.  The player is handed a box with no labels and no instructions and not only must…

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  • TWO BY TWO

    TWO BY TWO

    I try so hard to allow myself to feel the contentment of what is in my moment. To lie in the damp sunlight and chew my cud.  To wander from patch to patch lazily searching out green. Instead, I endlessly worry about things that have not even happened yet. Committing solution scenarios to memory.  Looking for problems that…

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  • THE MUD COME’ITH

    THE MUD COME’ITH

    The rain has brought forth mud and growth. The good, the bad and the ugly. “Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; …” Shakespeare

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