Women connect and share at fun event in Cathcart
Large gathering enjoy inspiring talks, lunch, prizes
Women’s Day dawned bright and crisp this week after a cold, rainy Monday.
On arrival at the Cathcart Methodist Church on Tuesday, it was lovely to see lots of new and familiar faces.
Coffee, tea and sandwiches welcomed those attending.
Four speakers on the day either grew up in Cathcart or Komani, or had moved here since getting married.
Claerwen Bowker introduced the purpose of the day.
The meeting was opened in prayer, followed by Sheree Denyssen talking about her journey of creating her business called Mountoo, where she makes bath salts, air fresheners, and infusers.
She talked with excitement and passion about using her pharmacy degree to create her products.
Debbie Johnson then talked about starting up her business on a farm outside Fort Beaufort called Rosy Regards.
Debbie photographs her heritage/antique roses. She grows and prints notelets, makes aprons, little bags and tablecloths using her incredibly talented photographs.
Debbie’s talk was fun and lively and had lots of laughs.
During the morning’s proceedings, and adding a bit of fun and excitement, lucky draws were held with prizes being handed out.
The speakers had also set up stalls selling their products.
There were also pecan nuts for sale and four original paintings on a silent auction, with several lucky women going home with beautiful art work by Lurraine Tarr.
There were also two raffles which also added to the excitement of the morning.
Margo Whyle, of Whyle Bees, talked about her journey into creating her beekeeping business – both the harvesting of honey as well as making products like lip balms using bees’ wax.
She also has a stationery range featuring sketches by her husband Mitch. After her talk, free lip balms were handed out to everyone.
Finally, Megan Wearing from the Winterberg,talked about her and her husband returning home after several years away and setting up an abattoir on her dad Guy Levy’s farm, to add value to their family business.
Megan shared a funny story about learning to become a meat inspector. Initially she and her husband imagined sourcing sheep from the local farmers and then transporting the packaged lamb to sell in the bigger centres.
They then discovered that setting up shops in certain communities to sell offal was surprisingly successful.
Lunch was then served which consisted of a choice of different home-made soups.
There was potato and leek, vegetable, chicken and butternut soups and fresh bread from the new local bakery.
Dessert was a choice of milk tart, chocolate brownies and little pastry cups with a caramel and cream filling.
For some in attendance it had been good to get out of their homes and do something different with 70 other women on National Women’s Day.