down, but will be back.

Since, end November for some reason i have feeling tired very soon. By end of December it was more or less confirmed that i had go in for a surgery. After all the tests, I was admitted to hospital for surgery end of Jan 2020.  There were many complications post surgery, which meant i was in ICU for three weeks & in hospital for another three weeks.

Now, i am back home & will need rest for a month to recover, which means i can not go to the farm

Until, i am up & about…..

ciao & inshallah

about this monsoon & other stories…..

Monsoons in India is a difficult period, especially with the climatic changes happening in front of our eyes. Usually the rains are in for three months from mid June & tapers off from end September. This year we witnessed something very different. It was relentless for five months. Yes, for 5 months. That is almost half a year, my dear !!

Every visit to the farm was filled with tension. Driving through crater infested roads, some places on the ghats did look as if it is going to slid down into a landslide anytime, trees would fall & block the roads, visibility was so low, the river adjacent to the farm overflew many a times, sometimes i would wonder if would be able to reach the farm ? (twice i couldn’t even reach). Staying in our moss infected rustic home on the farm during the rains is difficult. Would i be able to return to the city ? Sometimes cars has been washed off & remnants were found about 100 kms away. Has our rice survived the onslaught ? Has the millet’s survived ? Was there flooding in the turmeric plots ? Are my co-workers on the farm ok ? No electricity for weeks together & of course no telephone network either. It was indeed a worrying period.

Another thing which i experienced for the fist time is what happens to oneself when one lives in a state of constant worry for 5 months & it is not a situation which one would wish for anyone. I have aged rapidly, hairline has receded & whatever hair is remaining has gone grey & one lives with high levels of anxiety, which has its own side effects.

Now, for some shocking stats:

Mahabaleshwar getting the heaviest rainfall is nothing new to us, it always did. However here is a new development:  Patharpunj in Patan taluka in Satara has also recorded 7,000 mm rainfall.  & What about this : This October, Pashan in Pune city registered more rainfall than Mawsynram in Meghalaya (which is considered the wettest location on earth). 

Indeed everything has gone topsy-turvy !

In the coming years we will be faced with the question should we plant anything during the monsoons ? Will the crops survive this kind of rains ? Heavy rains will be followed by a severely cold winters & by March 2020 all moisture in the soil will disappear it will be a drought like situation yet again, with Pune sizzling at 45 deg C in April & May 2020.

All dams are full, so the city dwellers will get enough water throughout the year (no problem) & the only farmer’s who gain from the dam water is Sugarcane farmers (no problem). The rest, including yours truly obviously doesn’t matter. So, we are doomed & situation of small farmer’s are not “news worthy” either. But who are this ‘We’ ?

We are the Rice & Millet grower’s. We have cows, buffalo’s, goats & hens. We grow fodder too. This is not just the story of whole of Velhe taluka in Pune district, this is the story of all farmers who grow rice, millet’s & fodder.

I am quoting another farmer comrade who articulated it really beautifully:  “……..The culture of growing rice & millet’s is intense & divine. Intense because one is working in downpours & flooded fields for days at end. Plus, we have to keep our efforts manual, sans machinery. Divine, as farming is, but with Rice & Millet’s there is something ancient about it. You feel connected to humanity in an act repeated globally, since antiquity. Terraced landscapes that date back to the epics, at a scale so massive, you are left with the images of entire villages working land together to secure food……” One thing which is missing from what she has said is the fact that we have to put in money too. So, for the last five months one would’ve put in Rs 30k for wages & in the next couple  of months another Rs 20k will go too. Intense & Divine might sound very romantic & beautiful, but actually it isn’t.

Now, after all the turmoil of the last five months we have started to harvest or more aptly put above “to secure our food”.  Everyday whatever is cut is spread out to be dried, then tied into a big head load and bought to a clean place which we call ‘Kalla”. Then the threshing, drying, cleaning & finally in March 2020 we will do the milling.

In the meantime has anyone noticed the increase in price of Cattle feed ? Four years back, a 50 kg bag was around Rs 1,000/- & now it has gone beyond Rs 1,400/- & now it gets increased quietly by Rs 50/- almost every other month. Everyone in this land likes to claim that they love their milch animals, then why the fuck isn’t the prices checked ? Why is this inflation a no issue ? Recently, two weeks back we had elections for the state assembly & did anyone of the prospective candidates even raise this issue ? Did anyone even talk or discuss about this ?

Answer is a sad  NO.

These days i really feel i need to see a doctor, because everyone is claiming everything is normal. But, as far as i can see, the situation has gone beyond repair. The crisis in farming is so deep, the wound had got infected about twenty five years back, then Sepsis had set in, ten years back Gangrene had set in & now finally now the amputation has taken place. The amputation of farmer’s who are growing the precious staples from the rest of the political class & from the narrative of our daily lives. 

I will show you a simple example about what i mean by saying the amputation has taken place. As compensation for crop losses which happened due to excessive rains in end October 2019, i will get Rs 1,200/- deposited in my bank account in June 2020.

Did that make any sense ? Rs 1,200/- is what we spend every day on daily wages.

At least, if it was a cheque, i could’ve torn it into bits & send it back, with some spit in it !

BTW have you noticed these days everything has a color of Israel in it. The so called security systems, the drones, the PR agencies, the private security for the elite & ‘powerful’, the defense strategy, the defense expenditure & now the technology to snoop into our private messages in Whats app. I wonder why there was never a farmer to farmer dialogue between Israeli farmers & Indian farmer’s ? Wouldn’t that be a better option than spending crores of public money on something which is imaginary & almost irrelevant.

The India that i grew up always supported the Palestine cause. But today’s India is different. Just like the shocking climatic changes which we are witnessing, the elite in this nation aligns with the most disrespectful characters in human history.  Truth becomes lies & lies becomes truth.

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Well, let’s try to end this in a bit of +ve note, so here is some snaps of our rice & millet’s of this year, hopefully the Wild boars will leave a few kilograms for us 😉

 

 

Peace, love, Inshallah & khuda hafiz !!

our fertilizer factory….

These are the rock stars on our farm sustaining us & enriching the soil with their dung & piss. One of our dogs in the farm ‘Pia’ always accompanies our animals when they go off  for the day grazing in the forest, she loves playing in the beautiful little streams flowing with fresh water, chasing Peahens & Peacocks, practice her hunting skills on the hundreds of Jungle fowls & jungle hens that she would be meeting & sometimes prance around with Langur’s. I guess she has learned to avoid chasing Porcupines & Mongoose’s, they are better left alone.

If the days get warm, then our “Shakira & Beyonce” gang of cows, bulls & buffs come back by 11 am & go off again at 3 pm till 7 pm. If the days are not warm, then they don’t come back till 7 pm. Pia also stays with them the full 12 hrs along with our person Sonu who accompanies them. Even if it rains the whole time, Pia will not come back. She is just full of energy. Sonu also carries his lunch with him of Chapatis & dry fish chutney. So, Pia also gets her fill of chapatis. When the animals & Sonu takes a snooze, Pia must be a real blessing to have in their midst, because she can spot any danger. When the animals come back they have to be taken to their places & usually some dry fodder is given & then they sit down & rest. Pia also needs a giant bowl of rice with eggs & then she spreads herself like a queen to rest.

We have a second fertilizer factory too. However Pia has to be kept away from this fertilizer factory, because she likes to catch live chickens. We have more than hundred odd birds & their home is also cleaned twice a day, which gives us a lot of instant fertilizer, packed with NPK which is ready to release itself in the soil.

Basically there is a lot of shit which is going back into the soil.

Peace, love & bull shit !!

the season is changing….

After four months a continuous rains, the season is changing into a blistering hot October. I hope it remains like that, because we don’t want anymore rains. During the big deluge in August some of our Rice & Millet’s did get swept away. But what has remained shown real tenacity and it seems that (i dare say) we will get a decent crop.

We lost about 40 birds to various infections, since we don’t want to use any antibiotics etc. But the rest of the 160 grew beautifully and they are all sold out & some of the very best hens we have kept to use as layers. Another new lot of hundred was introduced last week.

Meanwhile the countryside is looking doomed with the lack of interest to develop agriculture.  One only have to see what is the budget allocation this year for agriculture, then one can see growing food is the least of priority for the fascists. There is also a move to introduce GM crops  big time. Some of the so called stalwarts are also supporting this move. No big surprise. You can read about this disaster over here.

The valley has become so green and beautiful….

One can just about see our farm & also the native Kurhasini aka Karle field above our house.

More coming up soon, until then;

Peace & Love !!

has the luck changed ?

In my last entry which was way back in March things were looking really bleak. I had stopped writing, which meant i stopped thinking. Whatever thoughts which were coming were only negative, basically there was nothing one could do, so one left it to the universe to turn things around & till then hold things together. From mid April our water table also started to go down rapidly & by end of May it was down to a couple of feet. In the last many years, the month of May used to be hot, however it wasn’t unbearable heat. Mornings & evenings used to be pleasant, but May 2019 wasn’t like that. The heat was unbearable, add to it the drought like condition without water, add to it the scarcity of fodder for our Buffaloes & cows & more critically i wasn’t able to grow anything. The only plants which withstood all this & gave us a sense of sustenance was Galangal & Bamboo.

If anyone had asked me to say which year has been the most toughest or the most difficult or the most challenging in my 36 years of adulthood, the answer is right in front of me : “July 2018 to July 2019” & if one adds to it the chest thumping march of the fascists in our country where all lies have become the truth, i have never endured something like this before.

So, why am i believing that my luck has the luck changed ? Wouldn’t the same things repeat itself again next year ? To the answer the latter question first : We have plans to reinforce our fencing to prevent the wild boars coming in & as far as the water table is concerned we have no alternative, but to make a small check dam on the river by end of end of  October. Whether we do a temporary one, which needs to re-made every year or a permanent one; we will figure that out by October. So coming back to my first question Why do i believe that my luck has changed for the better ? Its just a gut feeling, or may be its more than that. When the rains came & when the river started to flow again, i stood watching for a long, long time & then the “dam in me breached”. For the first time i had tears running down & i cried. Ha ha ha, yes this mountain of a man did weep. It has never happened to me before & i don’t even remember when was the last time i had wept like this. It was relief, it was hope, it was happiness.  Riverside was looking like a riverside again !!

Last year we couldn’t get people to help us with the rice transplantation, there were no Bulls to plough, things had gone really slow & in the end there was nothing much to show in terms of output. So again why do i believe the luck has changed: because this year people came to help us with the transplantation. It is the most challenging work in our farm, may be the the most important task too & definitely, the most labour intensive work of the year. One of my trusted co-workers has not been keeping good health since January, she had issues with her Heart, after a few months she started to have non stop bleeding & had to be operated upon. Her recovery has been slow & wasn’t really doing any farm work all these months. It was really a pleasantly moving sight to see her fully immersed in slush in the paddy fields & doing the transplantation. And yes, we have finished everything at the right time. And from now on it is almost impossible to find anyone to help, because people will be busy on their own fields. Hence the relief & the gut level feeling which says : Yeah you ba@#$rd, looks like your fu@#$ng luck has changed….

for the better !!

Until next time … Peace, love & Khudā Hāfez

difficult times….

It has been very, very difficult since September 2018. Wild boars have been coming in big packs & destroying a lot of stuff.

They do pull down even big banana plants, they scythe through the stems & eat the tender stems. Sweet potatoes… they left nothing . Rice, millets… all our hard labour has been destroyed. Their night raids started since September 2018 & it is still continuing. For the first time we decided not to grow any winter crops.

Barking deer’s, Porcupines, normal Deer’s, even Leopard’s do also come, specifically for us it is only Langur’s & Wild Boar’s who have created maximum havoc. Langur’s when they run on the roof, the roof comes down, when Wild Boars come in the night, they leave behind a path of destruction.

I have not been growing anything much in the last few months, the mood has been really down since September 2018.

Really, i don’t know what to do & how to handle the situation.

Just waiting for this difficult phase to pass…..

peace & love

 

a set back & other stories…

Usually our rice gets transplanted before everyone else in the village. The bulls come from Prakash’s house in the village to help us with the final preparations for rice transplantation. We had started removing the saplings two days before the bulls were to come. Then the news came that one Bull has suddenly died, then after a few hours its pair also died, then the next day a milk yielding cow died. Rice transplanting is a critical work (the most critical work) & none of us have any Tillers/ Tractors, we are completely dependent on the animals to help us with the work. The mood had become quite sombre.

Sometimes the Bulls come from Prakash’s cousin’s house also, then on the third day the news came that one of their bulls also died suddenly.

A few days delay became a week’s delay, it was all pale & gloom, especially when one loses animals during this season. I saw that people were sad & quite upset, they look after their animals really well. However they hadn’t given up hope. The only hope now was to wait till everyone in the village finish with their transplanting….then hopefully we could borrow a pair a Bulls.

This work is usually done & dusted in our farm  by July 15th every year, however this year it got over only by the last week of July. By then the saplings had really grown tall & whether the saplings will recover quickly enough from the “shock” of transplantation & start blooming again…. one has to wait & see.

One day it was raining quite heavily I had gone to see if everything was ok on the rice field. That’s when i spotted this beauty at work. Sitting atop a wire & diving into the rice field to catch small treats like small fish & insects, it was such a joy to watch this flash of colours during the rains. And when we got in front of the bird, it has a completely different set of colours & looks like a completely different bird…….. the original King of good times, the “White Throated Kingfisher” !!

Now that everyone has finished with their ploughing work, there seems to be a calm, even the river which one has to cross to enter our farm looks so beautiful.

Welcome to Pishvi !!

Untill next time … Peace, love & Khudā Hāfez

the year gone by….

I can’t believe that almost a year has gone by. Maybe the last 11 months has been a blur, maybe i was less focused on the farm, maybe i enjoyed staying on the farm so much that there was no time to sit down and get hold of my  thoughts, maybe the dogs were taking a lot of time out of me, maybe the kitchen that we run has become my focus of attention, maybe i was plain lazy to write, maybe there was nothing to write, maybe a combination of all the above weighed me down & if there was any free time, i would just collapse, curl up into sleep.

Now that the rains have started to batter us down & i have some time at hand. When i go to the farm, i actually wonder if i will be able to even reach the farm. Low visibility, at least at two places a landslide is waiting to happen. Finally, once i reach the farm, the place just envelopes me & it is very, very difficult to let go.

So many new plants, some planted by us, many planted by nature & one wants to see everything, touch everything, feel everything. The Bamboo saplings which we have been planting every pre-monsoon has really come up and the barren hilly areas in our land are really getting covered in its beautiful foliage.

And of course there are stunning, imposing or arresting views which one soaks in every minute.

& some curious sights also, like this Wild Banana flower !

During this season getting people to help us with work is difficult. Everyone has work in their own fields, but we manage somehow. People do come, people do bring their bullocks to help us with the ploughing. Over the years one has been able to ring in a good “work culture” without having to say anything much !!

This year on the “sloped” parts of our land we have lots of millets & one major addition has been Til (Sesame). I can’t wait till it flowers in late September to see the invasion of different butterflies in our fields !

Untill then….Peace, love & Khudā Hāfez

 

the story about us…

Writing or speaking never comes naturally to me. Earlier i used to write, because i was eager to share about everything which is happening in our farm. A lot of years have passed by. Now 99% of the activity in the farm has become monotonous, tedious, boring, uninteresting, tiresome, wearisome, dreary, routine, mechanical & sometimes even soul-destroying & mind numbing. Nothing new in that, it’s the story of all farmer’s in this country. I am always thinking & sometimes even pre-occupied in my own thoughts while working, cooking, walking, driving & sometimes even in my sleep. Also given the dark ages we live in these days i am very wary of sharing anything.

Whatever one has stood for & believed in is not even going to be history, history is also been rewritten these days. The only good thing which is coming out of this dark period & the impending gloom is the creative & collective expressions of pain & anguish. Even common people in and around the villages where our farm is located are all aware of how our country is been ripped apart by religious fanatics & bigots. Most people seems to be aware of the fact that the edifice is crumbling & there are bulldozers everywhere in wait like battle tanks to crush us economically, politically, culturally & in every way possible way so that the agenda of the killers of a certain M.K. Gandhi can be taken to its logical conclusion. That agenda is much more dangerous than having a madman like Trump in the helm in the U.S.A

My last post was in mid-April & we managed to survive the searing heat & welcomed the rains with open arms. Its been planting, planting & more planting for my wonderful group of co-workers. It hasn’t ceased to amaze me how they go through this 3 months of constant rain, wetness, strong winds & yet keep a bright smile on their face. If anyone has lifted a full cooking gas cylinder or the equivalent of that weight, will surely know what i am talking about. Most of us can lift it, however if one had to walk, carrying it on our head, for 2kms on slippery ground, with rain & strong wind lashing over… its near impossible. I really feel blessed to have this group of co-worker’s who are going about their jobs without any fuss. Since we cannot store Chicken feed, because dampness would lead to fungal growth i have to carry 50kg -100kg bags every week, then they have to bring the cleaned chickens to the car, sometimes carry cooking gas cylinders, it’s a bloody thank less job.

It’s always nice to sit down with them and enjoy a meal together, listening to some dark humor & other harsh realities of life in a village & to keep up their inquiring & analytical minds ticking by posing questions & answering questions by throwing back more questions, In these situations we all become “one”, even if it is only for a few hours.

With all the turmoil which has been greeting us in the last few years,  I have learned to appreciate the beauty of nature more & more. I can spend hours just watching our rice fields swaying from side to side with the wind & the dragon flies going about their jobs.

One moment one feels the sunlight, the very next moment one is standing on clouds.

Sometimes one feels as if somebody is calling you over to the next valley…..

Some serious work has gone into the farm in the last 3 months, even though sometimes it is soul-destroying or mind numbing, however our story will go on.

Peace, love & Khudā Hāfez

More useless bits of information

It’s been a while since one got any time to sit down & reflect on all what’s been happening on the farm & about life in general. On one hand there should be no excuse for not updating the blog, on the other hand after 7 years I feel it is natural that one takes a break. Since most of the things which is happening on the farm is repetitive, one doesn’t feel like writing more & more about the same things all the time. Many things has also changed in me in the last couple of years which has led to lack of time, to just sit down quietly, gather one’s thoughts, visualize a post, to write, to edit, to post etc. Since the last 7 months one has been on the farm every week for a few days & during weekends I have been busy with our “Underground Kitchen”. Sometimes when I have taken a break from the weekend cooking for Underground Kitchen one has stayed on 10-12 days on the farm. In many ways I have started to enjoy the quietness & tranquility much more than before. I have really started to look forward to the most bliss full & wonderful sleep one can get while on the farm. Now due to rapid ageing both body & mind seems to ask for this more & more from me. Our farm may be one of the best in Pune district in terms of the bio diversity; however one does not earn a single penny. Every farming household in this country will have a few members who are forced to migrate to the city in search of jobs & money. It’s the same with us, with one having to keep going back to the city to earn some mullah, which gets immediately recycled back to the farm.

Action on the farm during the past few months has been the more or less the same like the last few years. Sometimes we tend to go two steps forward & one step back, whereas sometimes it is one step forward & two steps back. Nothing is stagnant or constant when one is farming. Every 3 months there is a change for sure. Crops change, weather changes, what we grow changes, how we grow changes, relationships change, we also keep evolving as human beings, hopefully for the better like the soil on our land. As the organic content in the soil improved we can see a real leap forward in the health of our soil, especially in retaining moisture.  I manage to put in a lot of work on the farm from October to May. Then due to certain reasons the routine gets disturbed & one tends to ease off a bit. The winter was really cool, however by March the temperatures started to soar, yet still in comparison with the city the weather is pleasant and there is no reason to complain.

During the winter we had great sightings of the Great Hornbills on our farm, however I was not lucky to take some snaps. A pair of winter visitors from Eastern Europe (Orange Breasted Flycatcher’s) had decided to stay with us, which was really lovely. They were always there in our compound nibbling around in our Mulberry bushes for about 4 months & now they have gone 10,000 miles away. Hopefully they will be back again in November.

Our Buffalos are doing fine and demanding more & more food. Our chickens were part of a winter menu in a very popular restaurant, we also introduced them in our Underground Kitchen menu, the quality of the meat was well appreciated. Kadaknath birds also grew very well & since we had too many roosters, we introduced them in our menu & for the first time many people got to taste one of the best meats, actually India’s only Black meat.

In the meanwhile Galangal & Pea Brinjals have also become two of our premier produce.

All these years we had never consciously inter-cropped in our Turmeric plots. This year the inter cropping was intense. We had standing crops of Sunflower, Maize, Tomatoes, Chillies, Brinjals, Cabbages etc along with the Turmeric, even while we were harvesting our Turmeric & also even we replanted the tubers last month. This was a totally out-of-the-box thinking from our side and I am very happy that we pulled it out without damaging any of the standing crops. We harvested about 60kgs of fresh turmeric from about 700 sq ft. The final product of good quality turmeric powder is 13kgs. The quality of the Brinjals & Cabbages has been excellent. Some tomatoes have yielded really good quality tomatoes, whereas some have been disappointing. All put together for the first time our vegetable produce actually crossed 400kgs & more yet to come. On one hand one feels good about the fact that so many things are growing well, whereas on the other hand one feels sick because its been difficult to find takers for these vegetables.

Among field crops our Finger millets ( Nachni/Raagi) had done well and we have about 100kgs of the final product. This year we plan to introduce another very nutritious millet species called BarnYard Millet (Varai/ Bhagar). Our Paddy was a bit of a downer, one reason was that the last rains which we had in first week of Oct 2016 had come down quiet heavy, along  with strong winds, so a lot of paddy had fallen down. As usual immediately after the paddy harvest we planted Wheat by the last week of November 2016. We had heavily inter-cropped Wheat with Sunflower & Mustard. Last year we had sown 40kgs of seed, whereas this year we sowed only 20kgs. The output has been the same around 300kgs. So, when we plant Wheat next year, we can reduce the area of growing to half to get the same yield.

In end of Feb we lost all our dogs on our land due to a rabies epidemic. All of them were special, however one of them was really close to all of us. He was my best friend in the farm, his name was Babu.

It wasn’t a nice moment for me, when I had to hold him for the last time, so that the doctor could put him to sleep. Slowly almost all the dogs in the village died in the epidemic. For a couple of months we had no dogs on the farm and one felt really odd. It’s really an odd feeling when one doesn’t have one’s constant companion alongside. My co-workers on the farm also share the same feeling. We need dogs on the farm, dogs are also happy to be staying on the farm. However it’s a huge responsibility, especially when one takes into account the fact that the nearest Veterinary doctor is 60kms away!

For the moment it is back to the same story of water drying up, the river (our lifeline) adjoining our land has gone completely dry. We only have a couple of feet of water remaining in our open well to survive till the first week of June, when the rains come.

The main casualty is our Onion crop. Since it is not going to be possible to irrigate, we are forced to take the painful decision of giving up on our onions. Agriculture in this country is such a mess. Only if we had other farmer’s in our neighbourhood who were also taking winter crops we could have done something in putting pressure on the government to do check dams and swales. On the other hand my neighbours (who otherwise have an hand to mouth existence) would think of taking winter crops only if there is a security of water. Who can afford to take these kind of risks ? Have a look at our riverside, it is completely dry…

I leave you in this rather serious & sombre note

Peace, love & Khudā Hāfez