An organic farmer all her life, a one time President of the Guernsey Cattle Association, an FRAS (fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society, a male bastion) Conference speaker, always an activist in matters of health and farming, and has exerted her considerable abilities to great effect. Has her cold bath every morning, walks across the farm fields to get her spring water every day. Observes that organic milk does not amount to a great deal, unless the cows are organically cared for; in too many cases she finds 'organic' farms are overstocked and the animals not cared for by her exacting standards.

She was a patient at Kingston as was her mother, the original organic farmer, before her. Her daughter, Rachel, formerly of 'Rachel's Dairy Yoghurt', is now an articulate celebrity of the organic farming movement.

She sends this vignette of JC Thomson.

JC Thomson

Eva and Aggie Thomson, the two sisters of JC Thomson once told me of the illness he suffered in the Navy. He joined at an early age but found himself in a Naval Hospital suffering from Tuberculosis within a short time of enlisting.

One night he overheard the nurse informing the night nurse that he was not expected to last the night and therefore not to trouble herself too much with him.

JC muttered under his breath - "I'm damned if I'll die just to please them"

Then he began to think about the animals on his father's farm and what they did when they were ill - refuse all food until they were better. So by following this practice he gradually got strong enough to get himself discharged from hospital, only to be told as he departed that they gave him three months to live.

JC was an avid reader and he remembered some Nature Cure books he had once poked fun at to his friends years before. Subsequently he went to work on a relative's farm where he lived on fresh organic food, prayed every night that he would stop spitting blood, the blood had stopped for a week before he realised it.

On returning to civilian life he wrote to the doctor in charge of the Naval hospital to let him know he had made a complete recovery, only to get a reply from the doctor's widow to say that her husband had died.

Did JC succumb to 'T.B' because of the poor food he got in the Navy? On my grandfather's farm the workmen received a quart of milk and oatmeal every day as part of their wages.

Dinah Williams is a staunch NC adherent and supporter of the Kingston Fortnights, Boat of Garten.

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