check dam, water storage & power solutions…

Along with planting wheat another major task undertaken was to build a check dam on the river so that we can harvest the water.

So this is our water storage till June 2012

Looks good, doesn’t it? However, it is getting more expensive each year. Last year it costed around 3K, though it did break a couple of times and we spent some more on repairs. This year with increased costs stopping the water has costed us 6k.

We certainly cannot be doing this every year, we need to work out alternatives. One idea that comes to mind is to blast the river bed at different places during the summer so as to deepen it into a rock pool.

Necessity is the power of invention. In my case there is no power to invent but necessity does make me go & find the right people. Thanks to Nitya again, I was introduced to a genial genius of a man Lt Col. Vivek Mundkur retd. After a just brief conversation over the phone, I was delighted  to see him walking into our farm within a few hours .

He made various suggestions re. finding alternative solutions for power for our house and pump & for low-cost drip irrigation etc.

With diesel prices at almost Rs 50/- per ltr,  me carrying a 20 ltr can, 65 kms to & fro to run our diesel pump seems a bit crazy doesn’t it ?     Recently, I waited for over 3 hours to meet the chief Engineer in MSEB regarding our grid connection and had to leave without meeting him.  And here after just a brief conversation over the phone, Vivek just bikes down to our farm with clear uncomplicated suggestions/options/solutions on how to harvest energy from the sun. But i am not going to take my foot off the pedal to get the grid connection.

Coming back to Vivek, we’ve  agreed to a trial  of the solar pump (that’s the best part, if the pump does not work he will refund my advance payment). We will only know when we start using it whether it will be able to irrigate our wheat fields etc.  but it’s surely going to be an interesting period ahead….

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Peace, love & remembering a couple of them who made our youth so memorable in our quest to be free & in our celebration of freedom & in our romance with life !!

Without doubts our inspiration during our golden run in soccer while in college, to the one who sparked off our imagination, especially while in MCC , the indomitable Socrates. (a tribute here). Today i can only do a failing reminder to my son, who loves soccer, that nobody in today’s soccer comes even close to Socrates as a player & as a person.

& of course for all of us who become cynical & slow down as we age -yet there was this man, a person who had to express himself, throbbing with ideas, wanting to meet new people & continue taking risks all his life, & to my 84 year old father who refuses to come to our farm….. Dev sahab, a tribute here & another

tears & adios !

getting introduced to permanent agriculture

I love driving & usually have immense stamina to drive hours at a stretch. However, the driving this month did push me out of my comfort zone. There were pending plumbing issues,  running around to nail the MSEB guys for electricity connection & a long pending & painful issue to get an access road to the farm. When I am driving I love to listen to music but its been really frustrating to deal with the MSEB guys or even just getting the right people together to get the access road done. My mind was not at ease to enjoy music & the long drives were getting a bit tedious. I was also getting agitated with myself….. till finally i told myself that I needed to calm down..

But as it always happen with me, when i am down in the dumps….. usually i get directed towards something better & that’s exactly what happened. I tell you there is some method in the way the universe functions. When friends had come, Salil had suggested that all resources of the land should be on top of the land (uphill) & not below (downhill). He mentioned that for eg: here your water source is below the land & now to irrigate the land you are pumping water uphill, storing it on top & then bringing it down below etc in the process somewhere a synergy is lost….. so he suggested me to explore possibilities of exploring (rain)water storage uphill…..

Well… he did get me thinking & i had started looking up stuff to read & understand these concepts…… then i bumped into podcasts on permaculture so i downloaded them on to my pen-drive to listen to while driving. Suddenly the 3 hour drives again became not only fun but something to look forward to. I realised that there is a whole world out there to be learned & unlearned, especially after hearing about the author of Rebel Farmer, Sepp Holzer. He did not learn his techniques by reading theories out of a book. He learned through direct observation and experimentation with nature.

Here is a bit of what he says :

…….a natural form of agriculture that is based on one’s work with the cycles and interactions in nature. ! A business in harmony with nature is not only ecologically correct, it can also be economically very successful ”Learn to speak with nature, they learn to estimate correctly. Natural thinking, living and working is not only the basis of management, it’s an attitude that runs through all areas of life and exclude nothing. It’s about accepting responsibility for our contemporaries and for all living beings with moral courage and stand up for the preservation of a livable world! It is necessary to be ahead, to think ahead, instead of chasing all criticism. ”ask your land, your water, your animals, whether they feel good under your guidance.” 

Suddenly i feel i am thrown out of a hole or something. There is so much to do on the land like developing patios, planting by the hill and understanding more about raised beds, water gardens, ponds, humus retention basins, dry and wet habitats, micro climate zones, agroforestry (integration of trees and shrubs in agricultural use), fishing, aquatic breeding, animal husbandry, may be introduce some ducks into the river, chickens for sure and grow lots of medicinal herbs. And as Salil said particular emphasis should be placed on the hydrology of the landscape, because water is life!

One of Sepp Holzer’s  important component is the regulation of so-called “pests” – the regulation of populations of organisms causing harm. It’s about developing self-sustaining systems, a “symbiotic” land management that allow each individual to design his personal survival strategy……..

He also warns never to do something exactly the same as it was done somewhere before, but start small and experiment to learn what works best where you live.

He also never mentions his yields, he doesn’t keep those figures,  he grows so much food that he harvests what he needs and lets the rest go back to nature……

The other day i had gone to meet Nitya about introducing chickens & she was also convincing in her thoughts, when she said  do try & catch energy resources as high in the landscape as possible among many other principles of permaculture which she shared with me.

Well, as a concept or as a theory it sounds really convincing, but how will we put it in praxis is going to be a challenge. For eg: apart from the river water, we also have a geo thermal borewell with a present water level at a depth of 16.4 ft, which is also situated in the lower rungs of the land.

Lets see how things evolve in the coming months !

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Btw whats the job of the farmer ??

The job of the farmer is to grow good soil !!

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Peace, love & keep creating humus.

the samba (b)wheat…

It’s been one hell of a month……. “naa khushi, naa dukh” (neither happy, nor sad!)

Harvesting rice, threshing it & finally the milling….. phew, finally its all over & done with.

Firstly, there is a bit of joy in bringing home a sack(s) full of rice. Secondly, the learning from mistakes (about seeds, about tilling, about transplanting etc) has been immense & that’s giving me some confidence to unlock a few more codes in my attempt to embrace this land…

Immediately after the harvest we prepared the fields for Wheat, Channa (chick peas) & Mustard. Simultaneously the fence had to be reinforced & we had to check the water in the river. We needed to organise irrigation for the wheat crop too!

I also remembered the pathetic wheat seeds that i had got last year, some friends who are  experts in the field of local seed varieties had told me to hunt for Khapli wheat & had warned me not to buy wheat seeds from the market. I went asking to all the limited contacts that i have for wheat, all to no avail. Finally i went to a seed shop where the owner is a friendly sort and asked him … look sir… i am interested in Khapli wheat so can you get me 20 kgs  from a farmer ? He said he will try & asked me to call him back after 2 hours. I promptly called him after a couple of hours & he said a farmer from Sangli has sent it by ST parcel service & he will collect & keep it for me !!

So yes, its something really positive to look forward to & here are some details of this variety :

1. Emmer wheat, commonly known as Samba wheat or “Khapli,”  (Triticum dicoccum) is found to have curative properties for treating diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Its capacity to lower blood glucose and lipid levels and high temperature stress tolerance compared to other cultivated species makes it therapeutic.

2. It is believed to be developed from T. diccoides Koru (a wild form). It is grown in southern India, i.e., Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka. It is also grown in Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia.

3. Its only 2% of the total wheat grown in India.

4. Supposedly has more fibre content than normal wheat & organic shops which sell this wheat has price tags of Rs 100/- per kg !

5. Emmer wheat, due to hard and vitreous nature of its grains, milling quality is very superior especially for semolina preparation. Semolina of this wheat needs less cooking time and has more cooking tolerance.

Among all the above…. the fact that its grown only by 2% of the farmers  sparked off something which i’ve wanting to do for a while i.e to have a seed collective in our farm. There are so many varieties of rice, wheat, pulses & vegetables which are systematically gunned down by the seed companies. There has been enough written, talked & debated about it so here on the farm we are dedicating a plot of land to be a seed bank. Already about 8 varieties of rice have come in & would you believe it we are growing rice again this winter to reproduce these seeds !

My hands are itching with hope & excitement because we will be doing direct planting of rice, plus it also be our first venture into clonal propagation, something which one has heard so much from Dr Richharia, so its going to be a complete dress rehearsal & learning for us now, before we plant rice again next monsoon. Just as Prof Dabholkar always used to exhort us…. plant, uproot, replant, measure, observe, take notes, become the master…..

peace, love & more dress rehearsals !!

taking the good & the bad together…

Recently a friend had come visiting ….

& after walking around, talking & discussing about how we found this land & the time & effort that had gone in to find something which we liked etc- he said…. it looks good, you seem to have found a nice nesting place. After a year & half on the land, what do you think are the negatives of this place ?

He got me thinking, so here we go with what i feel are the negatives of this place :

1. Even though i am a very quiet type & like to just be in some corner, but the truth is that i like to be among friends (even if it is in a quiet corner!!). I miss the fact that there are no friends close by where one can just drop in, help with some farming, cook together, have a meal together & share a laugh or a few tears around a fire-place.

2. Another big negative is that something is missing in the soil. I came here with my experience of farming in coastal Maharashtra & South Gujarat yet it seems like a different world even though it’s just 300 kms away. After Prof. Dabholkar helped us crack a few codes,  growing fruits & vegetables was a pleasure. Whereas it’s not happening here as of now. There are many factors involved like the heavy rainfall, different climate & humidity levels, a different PH, me not on the land on the continuous basis & many more codes to be decoded. Our earlier place was just a plain rectangular piece of land where basic amenities came with the land. Here this place involves so many contours which requires a clear Perma culture based design, basically we are starting from scratch.

3.  Accessibility is also a huge minus. Not in terms of distance from Pune as that we knew very well from the beginning what we were getting into. The drive is not exactly on a F1 track !!  For digging a bore well we could not get the big vehicle because it wouldn’t climb the ghat. Even when we agreed upon a small one we still had to pay for a back up jeep.  When we take the plunge into house building then its going to be the same. Truck drivers can make a fuss when they know they have two ghats to climb. Even for farming related activities like bringing long irrigation pipes or some cow/goat dung etc is not impossible but it is expensive. Public transport is also practically non-existent with just one late evening bus coming into our village.

4. We have to weather this period of land speculation too. The land agents are a mafia…. lots of buying & selling is going on in the neighbouring villages so one actually doesn’t know how this landscape is going to evolve in the next ten years. Hopefully it will settle down by then & the land mafia will go jobless.

I really cannot think of any more negatives. Partner may have a few more to add but i feel things can only improve from here on, it can’t get worse….

When Arvind was here, one morning, we took a walk behind our farm……

Brilliant views up there…. so i guess as in life where we take the good & the bad together…. it’s the same with this place.

Infact this place is our life !!

a visit from survivors of the Diclofenac genocide !

We were busy on our rice fields, happily working in the sun baked fields with our sickles harvesting whatever the rains of this year have left for us. The fields in the neighbourhood are also alive with people working, everyone spreading out their cut harvest to dry for a couple of days, then carrying the bundles to a safe place near their house for threshing etc.

Suddenly Amol, the 10-year-old son of Prakash & Vimal comes running to me & says…. mama, mama, ek gidhad varti baslela ahe ! (uncle, uncle there is a vulture sitting on top of our land), so i leave my sickle, make a dash to our shack, grab the camera & jog along uphill where Amol is taking me. We hear their calls, so then we sit down & crawl on all fours. We can smell a carcass & there are flies all over but we cannot see anything. Unfortunately, the Vultures spot us first & start to take off one by one. We counted 15.

Local people have told me that till as recent as 20 years, it was a normal sight to see hundreds of them sitting together, but now we hardly see any.  It is hard for people here to even imagine that the veterinary drug that is commonly used- Diclofenac (given to animals to reduce joint pains & to allow them to work for longer hours!) is the cause for the mass deaths of vultures in the Indian sub continent. When vultures feed on the carcass of the animal administered with diclofenac it leads to kidney failure & death ! Endosulfan residues have also been found in the vultures.

There are unconfirmed stories locally that the British used to dump dead bodies of executed prisoners here in Madheghat for the vultures to feed on. Well there is an abandoned police out post built by the British in Madheghat !!

Coming back to the present, I’ve always seen vultures flying & soaring somewhere in the stratosphere. This was the first time one was up close & personal….

Here are some pictures I managed in those moments of frenzy. At times i feel when the birds start to move the camera can blur one’s vision so I get caught just looking through the camera lens or watching these awesome birds with the naked eye……….

peace, love & a hope to survive another genocide !

stories from under the mango tree

A couple of butterflies  travelled from Delhi to our farm en route to a new chapter in their lives……..

I will miss them while I am in Delhi though!

peace, love & please come again !

my 3rd eyes

are my son & partner, they just have a incredible knack of seeing things which i wouldn’t even notice.

like this Changeable hawk Eagle attacking a Brown fish Owl

or even a Patridge sitting on a tree !!

Baya weavers munching on the rice

Bee eaters….. my favourite

Unfortunately 3rd eyes will not be on the farm for a while….

sigh !

about nero’s guests & (un)occupying nature

Rice is coming to harvest in a couple of weeks, rape seed/canola harvest will start in a couple of days. But i had to stop working for a couple of days because its diwali & my co-workers need a break !!

There is something about diwali which puts me off, especially the conspicous consumption which goes with it & yes, i just dislike firecrackers. As a child i used to enjoy doing it, then one day in front of me i saw my best friend at that time getting badly burned & that was it, i never handled one after that, thankfully my teenage son is also not too fond of it. Standing outside our house in pune & watching the firecrackers going, i realise that life isn’t good.

Tacitus, the historian, claims Nero organized a party after the ‘Great Fire of Rome’ to eliminate rumors that he caused the fire. Apparently, many ‘criminals’ (like you & me) and ‘slaves’ were burned to provide light for the party. Who were Nero’s guests? Is the party still going on? Are Nero’s guests still around?

I hate looking at myself on the mirror, but a few times when i happen to look at myself, its scary,  i feel i am a fraud. Sometimes i feel, why am i doing this internet stuff (this blog & the Fb page etc), when the farm is still in its infancy, i feel like deleting this blog & its Fb page. Sometimes i feel there is no point in talking, it makes sense just doing the work on the farm quietly.

Recently some people had called me for a consultancy, with a mouth-watering pay cheque etc, i gently refused. I refused because i know that my farm has not broken even, there is nothing to show, i also know there will be no joy in it, because to get results from the farming methods that i adopt takes years & years of toil. Corporate language says to master something one has to put in minimum 10,000 hrs of work & practice, but have a look at this documentary film, Nero’s guests , where it tells us the tale of generations of farmers in this country.

Welcome to farming !!

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every one these days is talking of Occupy wall street, Occupy dalal street, occupy this, occupy that etc, etc…….

i was thinking why occupy ?

why not unoccupy ?

carvia callosa

I had written about this colossus last year. But these are its flowers & remember flowering happens only once in seven years !

Infact many years back when i used to work in the villages in Thane district, while filling up some forms for an old person, i had to ask him what is your age ?

He replied by saying: i do not remember my age but i’ve seen Kaarvi flowering eight times !!

I did not understand what he meant, then someone explained to me that he does not remember his age, but he remembers how many times he has seen Kaarvi flowering & kaarvi flowers only once in 7 years.

Oh ! so 7 times 8 = 56 !

‘Ole man’s age is 56 !

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Is there anything about this number 7, it keeps following me !

i’ve a weakness

though i like to put up a macho face etc………

sometimes its good to admit a few (in fact many) serious weaknesses………

One of them is is that I just love & adore country dogs !

Sometimes i feel, when i see the most aggressive dogs like the Rottweilers et all , i tell myself give me just 15 mts;  we will be playing with each other & frolicking & rolling on the ground ! There is something about me which even the most aggressive dogs, see as a calming influence !!

Well. these are my new soul mates on our farm……they are so adorable & such great company &  if ever anyone comes to our farm be prepared for a “grand welcome ritual” !

I know my son has some genes from me, so he is also fantastic with dogs…… but have a look at partner (chilled out on the charpoy with kaalya below her !!)

but seriously speaking: is life on a farm possible without dogs ?

Nope.