Thanks to many thinkers and doers, the first phase of setting up the farm was completed recently. And it’s nice to breathe easy for a while. Looking back, the motor and water supply was the first one to come alive. Soon, an access road was laid which served as the main artery. The fencing and
Sometime in October 2008, we felt well settled in our new environment. It was time to focus on the farm’s design as an eco-system but we didn’t feel like we were ready enough. We had some goals and ideas, a rough design and even a task list but the details were missing. So Ragu and
Mr. Palaniappan is a spirited 70 year old elderly person that takes care of the farm on which our current home is built. He lives away from his family but that doesn’t stop him from cooking great meals for himself. On a laid back afternoon, Aum and I were sitting on the porch and chatting
We had this not so unusual problem of hundreds of thousands of ants marching through the house, the front porch and side yard. They were clearly up to something big (a siege?) and we left them on their own for a couple of days. Their business was still unfinished. Nisha got tired of being up
One of our local friends graciously offered his house on a plantain farm for free until we finish building our house (gift-economy at work!). When he told us that some things need fixing, we didn’t take him that seriously. We started the process of move-in and thus began a series of fixer upper tasks :
We were introduced to Subash Palekar’s Zero Budget Farming (which is a catchy name for Natural Farming) by friends at Siruthuli, a local eco non-profit,. In this, we found a ready-to-walk bridge between Fukuoka’s spirit, Permaculture guidelines and the specific needs of our farm. Subash Palekar has documented his intensive experiments over a span of 8 years in a series
