When we bought this land at Vikramasingapuram, I faced buyers remorse and therefore several sleepless nights for several weeks. We were a family who had uprooted our comfortable city life and were planning to set up shop at a town that we had not even visited earlier. When we settled down and started to meet…
Category: Natural Farming
Raising chickens: our experience over the last six months
Chickens, we wanted to raise for quite some time but never took the first step. When we shifted from hybrid cows to native cows, we realized it was time to buy native chickens. And it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Chickens and cows share a symbiotic relationship – cows poop attract…
Up in the hills, In a forest clearing: Prayogshala
While searching for farm land, we had explored several parts of Tamil Nadu. Kodaikanal was one of them. It got dropped off the list because of difficulty of access and doubt of my family’s tolerance to colder climate for prolonged periods of time. But, no other place in Tamil Nadu came close to the beauty…
Malabar Pepper by Kaani tribe, KMTR forest
Dichotomy of the cultivated and the wild More & more people are slowly coming to realize the destruction settled-agriculture has caused on the planet by cutting down forests. So, it is upon our generation to restore them or at least, preserve them, now that we are aware that : forests are one of the many…
Palm Jaggery – King of Sweeteners
In the first 17 years of my life in Bombay, I used to wait for Taadgola every summer. I vividly remember the vendors who used to sell Taadgola in the corner of the road 100 metres from our house in the suburbs. I used to coax my mother to buy some whenever we used to…
Agni-nakshatiram, Cyclones and Rice harvest
When Noushadya and I chose to settle down for life in Tirunelveli, few geographical factors that this district had rooting for itself were : No major seismic activity in the past 100 years It was far away from the coast. So it wouldn’t face the wrath of rising sea levels directly in the next few…
Can natural – organic – sustainable – regenerative farming feed the world?
A lot of people agree that sustainable ways of farming are good for the ecosystems, humans and animals. But they don’t agree that it will be able to feed the world. The yield of individual crops have known to be lesser in sustainable farming than conventional agriculture. But rarely are the systems compared in entirety….
Farm Bills and Stone Age
A common argument that we hear against the simple lifestyle that Noushadya and I are trying to lead is that we are going backwards from the common narratives of progress and development. The comment that we usually encounter is that we are heading towards the stone age. While it is known or can be intelligently…
Solar Dehydrator and Vana Tulsi
Shade and sun drying are the most sustainable ways to preserve food for long duration. We, at our farm, utilize the power of the sun directly with this process. With minimum industrially produced goods such as meshed trays, glass and black paint, we have got a solar dehydrator made locally to shade dry flowers, herbs,…
Vivasayee's Life 
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