first click on the picture of Animals Farm below
and then click on the same image in the margin of the Academic Inn Books top page
For the past ten years Connie Lindqvist has been collaborating with John Seymour, author of The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency, to create illustrated books from John's writings.
The first of these books, Rye from the Water's Edge was published in 1995, followed a year later by Seymours Seamarks, both available (while stocks last) from the publisher, Academic Inn Books, P.O.Box 36, Rye, TN31 7ZE (Tel/Fax: 01797 226397). At the time of her untimely death in November 2002, Connie had begun work on a third book based on a series of two dozen poems to which John had given the title Animals Talk Back.
Connie had visited John's home Killowen near New Ross in County Wexford on several occasions...and on one particularly auspicious occasion John returned to Rye as cabin boy aboard Connie's 30-foot gaff-cutter Vemara. Connie was so struck by the simple beauty of the setting and the good sense of the self-sufficient homestead and lifestyle that John had built up around him, she decided to set the first six of the poems on a mythical Animals Farm.
Animals Farm is based on John's Killowen but artistically improved to include Toni's Pinschof's barn in the foreground...remembered down to the very last detail by Connie from her annual visits to Kergroas Vras, Toni's organic farm in Mael-Pestivien, an hour's drive inland from the ancient pirate's lair of Morlaix on the North Brittany coast.
To our good fortune, Connie had just completed her set of six Animals Farm illustrations...earthworms, hens, sheep, cows, geese and fly...a few weeks before she died. Connie had big plans for the earthworms page as the opening webpage to Connie's Good Food Guide. And the fact that this particular illustration has been at Number One on our website download listings since it was posted on the web in May 2002 suggests she may have been onto something.
© rye3d 2000
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