Natural Farming – Vivasayee's Life

Farm Update | August 2022

Calving season has finally ended with two calves born back to back in the last week of August. We are now selling curd locally at Agasthiyarpuram. We will be using the revenue from curd and sale of milk from Kanmani to fund the construction of the thatch shelter for our calves. Our plans to construct…

நாட்டுமாடு / देसी गाय and Farm update – July 2022

It’s calving season here in our farm. We welcomed two beautiful female calves last month. We’ve named them Parvathi, Gowri’s calf and Ponmani, Kanmani’s calf. It is so much fun watching three calves jump around the cowshed and grow up together! We wanted to share a photo of all three together but they start running…

நாட்டுமாடு / देसी गाय and Farm update – June 2022

June was a relatively slow month at the farm. The cows had slightly tough time grazing because despite the rains upto May mid, the grasses had all dried off after the delayed agninakshatram. The South West monsoon which brings the occasional drizzles also got delayed because of which the month of June was unusually hot….

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…

Palmyra Sprouts Flour : A rare and unique Karpagatharu offering

Palmyra Sprouts Flour / பனங்கிழங்கு மாவு / ஒடியல் மாவு is a forgotten produce native to Tamil Nadu. It is grown from the seeds of the fruits of the magnificent Palmyra trees / பனை மரம். Palmyra trees are referred to as Karpagatharu (கற்பகதரு) in Sangam literature for the tremendous number of useful products the tree has…

COP26: Are India’s commitments enough?

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP26, was the 26th annual conference, held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. Around 197 countries attended. The representatives were either the country’s leaders or delegates. Here is a summary of what India what has agreed to in COP26. There are only 7…