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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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Nine Bouncing Baby Piglets
After the longest labour I have experienced with a sow (five hours) Poppy gave birth to her sixth piglet. After an hour of cycling them in and out of their box having a good drink so there were at least three on her at one time, I decided that she must be finished. It was almost…
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Long Light
I went out into the evening for these pictures last night. As the long light slanted in, the sun dropping low, it’s rays whispering in under the hood of my lens. My friend came yesterday and we spent two hours trimming Tima’s (the kunekune sow’s) hooves. Most of this time was spent gently talking her into laying down…
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Greens in the sun
Poppy spent most of the day laying out in the field enjoying the sun. Sheila spent most of the day laying out in another field enjoying the sun. And so did Molly, and Tima and Tane. And all the cows. And my bed of greens lay about in the garden enjoying the sun. The greens are…
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How Are you?
This is such a strange question to ask a person – “How are you?” This word ARE. How ARE you? The book tells me that ARE means “Second person singular and plural and first and third person plural present indicative of be” Ok, that makes a lot of sense. About as clear as mud I think.…
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Creeps
We never got the piglets new fence finished yesterday but maybe tomorrow. Farm work has a delightful endlessness, there is always more to do but when you don’t quite finish every job it does not really matter – there is always tomorrow. The important thing is to do a little every day towards completion. Feeding…
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Soybean Harvest
Yesterday I looked up from planting trees and saw the big machines descend upon the farm that surrounds us, the land belongs to John’s Uncle. These are not our beans, we do not crop the fields. They are huge, heavy, expensive machines and move fast and within minutes we were choking and sneezing in heavy dust as the…
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