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…
Category: Natural Farming
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….
Native cows arrive at the farm
After a long wait, native cows a.k.a naatu maadu arrived at our farm on 28th February 2021. We were rearing hybrid cows (cross between jersey with native breeds) until last month. But their high maintenance needs made us re-evaluate our decision. It was two years ago, between February and April 2019, that 3 cows :…
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,…
Cold pressed oils : Fad or here-to-stay ?
Oils labelled as cold pressed oils have started appearing in supermarkets, kirana stores, exclusive oil shops all around us. They are being sold in both packaged and loose forms. In Tamil, it is called Sekku Ennai; or pronounced as Chekku Ennai by people of southern Tamil Nadu. The manufacturers are both domestic as well as…
Why organic food is costlier?
It seems counter-intuitive but the current sense of the word ‘Culture’ seems to have been derived from the word ‘Agriculture’ and not the other way around. And it is ironic that there is almost no culture left in mainstream agriculture anymore. What we are now seeing is not synthesis, which is what agriculture needs, but…
How do we deal with our shit? Like, literally…
In human history and specifically India’s history, there is a plenty of stigma associated with handling human faeces / shit / poop; whatever you like to call it. I think poop sounds cute. So, I will stick with poop, for the rest of the blog. And pee, for urine. If handled incorrectly, poop and pee…
A snapshot of happenings at our farm
We are building a food forest and kitchen garden for ourselves at Papanasam, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India since July 2018. We have been focusing on adding a lot of carbon / organic material to the soil. That’s why you will see photos covered with neem, mexican sunflower and glyricidia. We have let the old neem…
My opinion of Covid root causes
I have been avoiding in getting involved in discussions around coronavirus much because I am in a bubble. Until this blog post. All I can hear about when we hear the solutions to Covid are : Vaccines and Herd immunity. And definitely vaccines more than herd immunity or personal immunity. While vaccines are a good…
