Nurturing home-grown development in South Africa

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One of the many families whose lives have been changed

Your donations do make an impact: they help create results like this 
(from a case study of a Soil For Life project part-funded by Thatu). 

The Snyder family from Seawinds are amongst the growing number of home gardeners in Cape Town who can boast a green oasis in their front garden that enables them to put good, safe, fresh food on their table every night.

There are seven people (including their two grandchildren) living in the Snyder's modest home and, needless to say, the household income does not go very far. The parents, Peter and Marilyn, joined the food-growing culture in Cape Town four years ago and is still hard at it. In a letter of appreciation for the training and support they have received, Peter said:

"We always had to buy greens from the shops and brokers, but since I’m involved with (my home garden) we hardly buy from brokers any more. For me it’s a pleasure seeing my wife making salads and stir-fry out of my garden."

The Snyder’s veggie patch measures seven paces by four and has produced a bountiful harvest of peas, broad beans, baby marrows, potatoes, lettuces, radishes, spinach and giant-sized heads of broccoli. All of this has been proudly weighed and recorded in a diary, as well as sales of vegetables, seedlings from his tiny nursery nestled in a protected spot near the wall and lettuces that he has potted up in buckets. These are being purchased by neighbours who are shown how to harvest individual leaves as required.

Environmentally sound

Peter feeds his earthworms with kitchen waste, makes his own liquid fertilisers and pest deterrents, and educates the passers-by over the garden wall. His 22 year old son has enormous respect for his father and what he has achieved – an unusual thing amongst young people these days – and the grandchildren are proud to tell their classmates that the lettuce leaves in their cheese sandwiches come from their own garden.

Quite apart from the obvious health benefits of eating fresh vegetables, the sparkle in Peter’s eyes is ample proof of the joy he has had from this verdant patch. His arthritis has improved from regularly eating parsley and drinking ‘vegetable tea’, and he has a real sense of purpose to each day. Money he was spending at the shops and ‘brokers’ to buy ‘greens’ is available for other needs. Peter and Marilyn are very pleased with life.

The Snyder family are no longer dependent on Soil for Life for garden inputs. Peter makes his own compost and vermi-compost (the latter in the remains of an old fridge that he salvaged), collects his own mulching materials, saves seed and grows his own seedlings. He sells compost and seedlings and, in the past, has sold individual non-heading lettuces in small buckets over Christmas to his neighbours.

He is a proud and fulfilled husband, father, grandfather and member of his community. And so he should be!

Please donate to Thatu to help people like Peter and Marilyn.

There are some very simple and quite painless things you can do:

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Thatu is a UK Registered Charity No. 1108655