The seeking for efficiency in the post industrial age has come to mean getting more and more for less and less. In other words, the purpose and spirit of efficiency have been reduced to serve human greed. But around the world, for centuries, efficiency was sought at different levels to serve different purposes: Through a
When farming is treated as a business, the general outcome is mono-cropping, fertilizing, and using pesticides to extract the maximum yield. In the name of creating space for cash crops like banana and turmeric, we have seen neighboring farmers cut Papaya trees, weeding out fragrant flowers and not even grow a few vegetables for their
Farming is not a profession but a way of life Farming is one of the few endeavors that can address human needs at all levels – physical, mental and spiritual. So we decided to embrace its potential at all levels. Practically, this means a few things: Living in the farm and considering ourselves the primary
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
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 :
