Cecil & Clay Story

Growing up in North Carolina, I loved planting time because it meant walking barefoot in red NC clay. Every spring Dad would break out the tiller and transform our dull garden into a brilliant display of freshly turned Cecil soil. As a kid I ached to kick off my shoes and sink my toes into that soft, red earth. From digging rocks out of the garden, to shuffling soil over seed rows, my feet soon turned the orange-red color of the earth on which they tread. It was during those spring evenings, with red soil between my toes and a fistful of Silver Queen seeds in hand, that my love for Carolina soil began.

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In college, a mason jar of red Cecil clay sat upon my desk -  a friendly reminder of home amid the brown soils of Ohio. Though my northern friends sometimes knocked the "nutrient-poor ultisol soils" of the south, they doubtless never experienced the bounty of green beans, onions, strawberries, muscadines & sweet taters that our southern soils provided. :)

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The creation of Cecil & Clay earrings was inspired by these memories and others. Memories of springtime, of sweet corn & green beans, of Spring Peepers & fireflies, of family & friends, and of red, Carolina clay.