The Kitchen's Garden

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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

Meadow in the Snow

Yesterday was a snowy day but a very calm one. We seem to be drifting down into a sentient state, exacerbated by the inability to move about freely, where everything is felt and only just heard, like a song sung by an unnamed stranger far off down the road, its message just out of reach,…
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you did not believe me?

Here, in my unheated bedroom. ICE on the inside of the double glazed windows. Makes me feel right at home. I have never lived in a house with heated bedrooms anyway. Now whenever you see those silly christmas decorations with the sprayed-on ice around the glass, you can say. I don’t think you really want…
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The Kat.

Scrapper can look cute too.. sometimes. Snow looks cute, sometimes, not when Man Meets Snow though. Then snow loses its lovely smooth forms and is knocked into shape, just not a shape I like. Yesterday was very cold, after the weather had got over its problems at dawn it rose to just above 0F. So…
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No shortage of Wild Things on the Farmy

“Oh please don’t go. We’ll eat you up … We love you so.” And Max said “NO.” from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak one of my favourite children’s books of all time. I never saw the movie, I loved the book that much. I have read it to children so many times…
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Sheila hates her diet so much she tried stealing the chook food.

I am not sure if this is Pania again, too far away to see if she has the gap in her crown or not. But What is she doing up there again? Probably trying to warm me about what I would find in the chook house. Sheila was in the chook house to steal their…
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Do you really want to live sustainably – self sufficiently?

Sustainable is not only about food. It is also about lifestyle. Our house is heated by a wood stove. (We only use trees that have fallen in storms or been culled by farmers.) This means that only one area of the house is heated, the rest is just .. well .. cold. I lay in…
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