Sudhakar

Mexican Sunflower cuttings for sale

Mexican Sunflower is one of the first couple of biomass producing plants that we introduced in our farm when we started farming. The other being Glyiricidia – more about that in a later post. Adding biomass to the soil quickly is the best way to kickstart soil health regeneration. The reason for this that once…

What would we do without you, Suli?!

I scrolled through my instagram feed and i realised that i had missed posting about Suli much. I have failed to dedicate as much attention as he deserved on our social media space. He is the individual, next to my parents, who has spent the most amount of time at the farm with us, physically…

Karadi Tales from in and around Vaanavil

Karadi | கரடி (noun | Tamil) A horrendous incident involving a sloth bear and villagers occurred in a village less than 10 kms from our farm this month. A sloth bear had attacked a man riding on his bike and then mauled the faces of couple of men who came to his rescue. https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2022/nov/07/sloth-bear-attacks-three-in-tenkasi-two-left-critical-2515727.html (Trigger…

Obituaries of the Wild around Vaanavil

~ 10 minute read Trigger warning : couple of photos in the blog include pictures of dead animals. We keep posting a lot of happy stories about the farm life and the domesticated animals we rear. But the complete picture is more uglier than the image social media prods us to create. We want to…

நாட்டுமாடு / देसी गाय and Farm update – May 2022

Hello, We ended the month of May with a sweet note of welcoming Vennila, our new baby calf ❤️🌝 Vennila’s arrival was a pleasant surprise to everyone at the farm, including her caretaker Prema akka. We knew that her mother, Gowri, was pregnant but we had no clue that she was about to deliver. The…

நாட்டுமாடு / देसी गाय and Farm update – April 2022

The month of April saw a lot of evening showers making the summer tolerable for the cows, humans and other animals. Even in the scorching heat, there is still greenery around for the cows to graze. We replanted ginger and turmeric in our existing zero till raised beds and also in the new beds that…

Farm Tour & Conversation – Every Saturday

Hello everyone As some of you may know, we have been hosting a farm tour every Saturday. We started this in August last year with the objective of demonstrating that it is possible to regenerate a land with smart agro-ecological practices in a short span of 4-5 years. We have been getting a constant stream…

நாட்டுமாடு / देसी गाय update – March 2022

Hello everyone! It is getting hotter every day and all the wild grasses had almost gotten fully consumed. The last 3-4 days have brought us rain and the grasses will start growing again. This is the summer month when will start chopping the perennial napier and super napier cow grass that we had planted over…

Homesteading update : Composting our own shit

We started construction of compost toilet in May 2019 and completed in August, the same year. The compost toilet foundation and the chamber walls, the chamber ceiling were constructed with stones, hollow bricks, cement, sand and concrete. The walls were built with self-manufactured sun-dried adobe bricks made with farm sub-soil. The roof was a madras…

நாட்டுமாடு / देसी गाय update – February 2022

In March 2021, we raised funds from our friends, family and well wishers to buy, protect and raise cows native to Tirunelveli, of the Thenpandi (தென்பாண்டி) breed. We have been sending monthly updates to them the last 12 months. This month onwards, we are going to send the update to the followers of our blog…