Student of Week Nine: Kathleen Staley

In 2002 Kathleen Staley made a bold and brave move, she left her faith. Two years later she made another one, and left her marriage. After over a decade of marriage, the raising and home schooling of her two children and a lifetime of devoted service to the Jehovah Witness Faith, she moved from Arizona to California and stayed with a longtime childhood friend. In California, she not only began to heal and nurture herself she started her first compost pile, through the care and feeding of both a new life was born, her own.

The faith of the Jehovah Witnesses has served Kathleen well: She was raised to believe that being separate and different, her very uniqueness is a path to power. From the time she was a small child her father, the Leader/ Elder of a California congregation, taught her to be a persuasive speaker, a gift she now possesses with effortless grace. Living under the oppressive Witness faith, with its rules for everything, including speaking or socializing with those outside of the faith, wore on her soul. The transformative power of the compost pile was her first physical connection with the web of life, while simultaneously allowing her to unravel the views she held of herself and society.

In 2005 she moved to the Bay area, where she worked for an organic landscape company. There she learned to purchase quality plants, install gardens, and maintain them. Beginning in 2006 she attended Merritt Community College in Oakland with the focus being Landscape Horticulture. Though she learned a lot she began to realize that ornamental landscape did not align with her values. That realization led her to the farm class at IVC and saying, “What I really love about this class is that the focus is clearly on the whole organic approach to working with plants, honoring the nature of the plants, and forming a respectful working relationship with the farm.”

Kathleen looks forward to the day when she can buy a piece of land, build a home and garden, live sustainably, all while being part of a community of like minded people. It is the interconnection of insects, soil, plants and the animal kingdom that composes this great web of life and Kathleen holds it all in deep reverence. She “really likes the respect the farm program brings to the web of life.”