Pat Featherstone - Inspiring Woman of the Month
Just imagine if ... every home, school, clinic, hospital, police station and church had a food garden (‘a little patch of salvation’. Just imagine the impact this would have on poverty and malnutrition in South Africa, and on the effects that the current recession is having on people’s lives.
Born, bred and educated in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, Pat Featherstone moved to Cape Town, in 1973 to take up a teaching post at a local High School. It was not the teaching that brought her here, but the father of her about-to-be children. Three girls down the line, twelve precious years in their making, and many life experiences under the belt, Pat was propelled into the ‘real’ world; the life she had been born to live. Having returned to her home country to set up a new life in the early 90’s things didn’t turn out quite as expected.
Tough as it was about to be, she drove from her refuge in Zimbabwe, with dogs, children and scant possessions and enjoyed the freedom of just being. No home, no belongings worth writing about, no work, no money, no future on the horizon. Only the multitude of gifts bestowed upon her on entering this world, and her three sisters and a mother who believed that there was a life to be lived. It was just a matter of getting on with it.
Twenty four years down the line, the children out of the nest and armed with a BSc Honours degree, a certificate in higher education and twenty years of teaching experience in biology, biochemistry, parasitology, animal diversity and evolution at secondary and tertiary institutions, Pat committed herself to using all of her God-given gifts, to pursuing her passion for the environment, and to helping people to help themselves to a better quality of life.
She believes emphatically that ‘in the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.’ She runs a non-profit organisation, Soil for Life, which is based in Cape Town and which works in urban and rural areas in the Western Cape. Its vision is all encompassing: growing good, clean food; growing people; growing communities.
If ever there was a time to grow your own food it is right now. With the world facing three major crises all at the same time - financial, food and environmental - it is becoming more and more evident that those who have taken the time to acquire the knowledge and skills for cultivating the soil and are confidently utilising any space they have available, no matter how small, will be the protagonists of the future in more ways than one. All three crises are interlinked. All three result, sadly, in increasing numbers of people going without some of their most basic needs – sufficient, safe, nutritious food, and clean air and water.
Soil for Life, and the ethos it embraces, could not be better placed to take a leading role in turning things around. It is a grassroots organisation that promotes environmentally sound technologies for growing food. Its methods are soil-building and water-conserving. They are also low-cost; people are shown how to make use of all available resources by exercising their own innate powers of observation and creativity.
This has a spin-off in that the very resources required to develop, maintain and protect a garden are the very same materials that are creating massive problems at our landfills sites, and contributing to pollution of air and water. In addition, expensive and highly destructive agro-chemicals are avoided at all costs. The results of the organisation’s work are the gardeners that build impoverished soil, that produce food of the best quality, that change their surroundings into oases for their own physical, economic, social and spiritual growth, and that are working towards a better world for themselves and their fellowmen.
She runs regular workshops (‘Grow to Live’) to train, encourage and support urban food gardeners, and to generally promote sustainable food production and a food-growing culture. She is also working in tandem with Anthea Torr of Biophile magazine and together they have started a monthly ‘Sacred Sustainability’ workshop.
Pat has attended two international Organic Agriculture Development training courses – one in Sweden and the other in Thailand - and was invited to be the International Guest Speaker at Keene State College in New Hampshire, USA. She writes regular articles for the Biophile magazine, produces a quarterly newsletter and has recently written a book (entitled Grow to Live) which will be on the shelves in July 2009. Her daughter, Leah Hawker, is a professional photographer and the two of them work closely together – Mom writing, and daughter illustrating with drawings and photographs.
She won a Peace Gardens Award in 1998 whilst working with Food Gardens Foundation, and Soil for Life received an Eat-in Merit Award (for its preserves and fresh produce) and the Cape Times Vodacom Environmental Award for Urban Agriculture in 2007.
It was George Bernard Shaw who wrote the following words that epitomise the way she lives her life:
‘This is the true joy in life. That being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one. That being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy"
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do or it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up or the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.’
Pat, we salute you!
