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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
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Today we are fixing the Back of the Hen House.
That may sound pedestrian (fixing the hen house) but to do so I need to move the big pigs ~ FreeBee and Jude. So there will be ‘backwardsing’ before ‘forwardsing’. This is a very important repair. Jude has been pulling the wooden barn siding off the back of the building to get to the chook…
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The Times they are A’changing
The barn swallows are gone. The mosquitoes are rare now. The flies are still here. The starlings are appearing in great droves called murmurs. And the spiders webs have arrived. Everyone racing to fatten up for winter. Not me. I am racing to fill the shelves and freezer. The pumpkins are harvested. The blush of…
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Dinner is Break Time
Which is why country people eat early. Dinner is not the end of the day. Dinner is a break in the afternoon chores. Which is why I like to call it Tea! Though no one around here knows what I mean when I say that. At 5.30 I usually sit down for tea. No cats…
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Rising Before the Light
The time has come where I wake at 5.30am to make a cup of tea and start the earliest of early morning chores and it is still dark. Cool and Dark. It does make me a bit sad. The good news is that I get to watch the sun rise again. As the light makes…
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Everyone Gets in on the Act
The cows share the pig garden and a really great TKG Sunday Newsletter. And what’s with YouTube? Notes from the weekend. Out of nowhere the YouTube channel where I store little shorts of the farm is getting lots of traffic. Natural sound, handheld and unedited seem to be getting the most attention. There is more…
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How to tell if a Pumpkin is ready to harvest.
Good morning. Our pumpkin patch is almost ready to harvest. And I am feeling comfortable enough to call this season a success! I have never grown a proper pumpkin patch before but we have piles of little kids around now and so Our John wanted to grow them a pumpkin each. The kids will carve…
The Kitchen's Garden
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