Biography: Pat Crawford, Journalist & PRPat Crawford is a freelance journalist and Press Officer for Hadlow College. Her many years' experience have led Pat to specialise in the ‘farming' and equestrian sectors and all rural matters, including conservation.
During her professional career Pat has been a television researcher, written for a wide range of national and regional media, ‘ghost' written for a number of well-known personalities, written speeches, penned several booklets on a range of topics and acted as consultant for books.
Pat is passionate about the issues of ‘food security', ‘seasonality' and the need to promote British-grown and produced food.
She can be contacted on 01622 817319 or 07771 635684
Until relatively modern times - about four-five hundred years ago - the vast majority of plants were grown for food, medicinal or welfare-related purposes.
It's logical that what goes around must, in time, come around. This is certainly so in the case of ‘natural remedies', ‘botanical medicine', ‘medical herbalism', ‘herbal medicine', ‘herbology' and ‘medicinal horticulture'.
‘Going green' is extending into new and unusual situations. In pursuance of ‘urban agriculture', people living in cities and towns have been encouraged to give serious consideration to installing a kitchen garden on balconies, flat roofs and other suitable high spaces. This initiative should be seen in light with statisticians' predictions suggesting that cities are more likely than rural areas to suffer the effects of any future food shortages. Now ‘greening up' is extending rapidly into country towns and villages - but not necessarily in order to produce food!
‘Grow your own'... ‘five-a-day'.... ‘urban agriculture'...'grower group'... ‘allotment clubs'.... ‘plot-to-plate'.... ‘food security'. Just some of the words and phrases that increasingly feature in the media every day and which, as a result, have evolved to become a meaningful part of our vocabularies.
I knew absolutely nothing about cranial osteopathy before I had a bad accident. Caused by a young man's failure to comply with basic health and safety regulations, the outcome was a gigantic bruise on my forehead and two huge knees - one of which I subsequently discovered was broken.
