Farming plan

When I say "I bought a farm" first thing people ask is "What are you planning to grow there?" Some "experienced" farmers suggested me to clear the forest area and plant their favorite cash crops like areca, rubber etc. They also suggested me to fill up soil in the low lying paddy fields and plant the cash crops there too. Initially I tried explaining our philosophy of natural farming or permaculture - which many did not get or thought I have gone insane. This post is an effort to clearly document our philosophy and plans for the farm.

Custard apples harvested from the farm

Chemical intensive "modern agriculture" (so called) we are practicing today is depleting earth of its fertility and making it sterile. Heavy chemical usage combined with continuous pumping out of water stored deep under the earth has played havoc with water table. One problem is water table going down ever deeper and the other problem is whatever is there is polluted with chemicals leached down by the irrigation water. Some areas in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in India are now pumping out water from 1000+ feet deep aquifers containing water stored during stone age. These aquifers cannot be recharged. That emergency storage is gone once they are emptied. You can imagine what will happen to these areas in next few years after the farmers run out of this water. No doubt we will end up with large deserts. Half century back average depth of water table in whole of India was not more than few tens of feet. Same land has faced disastrous consequences after "green revolution" promoted unscrupulous subsidized chemical usage and uncontrolled pumping out of water backed by free electricity supply for agricultural pumps.

A citrus fruit harvested from the farm

If we understand the seriousness of this problem and start thinking what is the solution we get the answer not too far away - we see it in any natural forest nearby (if you are lucky to see one nearby). Plants grow vigorously, healthy in any natural forest. Nobody puts chemical fertilizers. Nobody sprays pesticides. Plants of all varieties coexist and grow to reach the sky. In fact plants just want to grow because they start dying the moment they stop growing. That is why you see a plant seed fallen on a boulder or on roof of a building growing without any assistance. Problem begins when we start fiddling with the nature. That is why Masanobu Fukuoka says - incomplete human knowledge is the problem. Human knowledge about nature will remain incomplete because nature is very complex. The science we follow today is called reductionist science as it reduces the problem to very few parameters for the sake of study. But nature does not obey this reductionist approach. For example if you take growth of rice as a study subject, there are so many parameters like temperature, rain fall (intensity and timing of rain), sun light intensity, insects, bacterium in the soil interacting with the plant roots, oxygen and CO2 content in the air etc. Nuclear radiation absorbed by clouds passing over Fukushima nuclear disaster site may affect rice growth! Realistically, number of parameters is endless. There is no way a scientist can study the plant growth and yield keeping all these parameters and their continuous variations in view. Therefore scientist chooses handful of parameters to control them in a green house and studies them. But that reductionist view does not hold good in field where all parameters continuously vary. Therefore only way one can understand this complex nature to some extent is by carefully observing the nature itself. Masanobu Fukuoka developed his method of natural farming by observing the nature for several decades and after several failed attempts. Masanobu Fukuoka's book One Straw Revolution published in 1975 beautifully explains this.

Purists of non chemical philosophy are divided into philosophies of natural farming and permaculture. We don't consider organic farming for this discussion because one can use "approved" chemicals (some of which are toxic too) in approved quantities and still be certified organic! This kind of organic farming can damage earth as much as any kind of chemical farming does, if not more. Therefore we disagree with organic farming; it is not for us.

Little Ishaan (my son) on a cashew tree

Natural farming philosophy was promoted by Masanobu Fukuoka. Natural farming is what it literally means - allow nature to do its work with minimum human intervention. Human intervention is mainly in the form of harvesting the produce, returning excess to the nature and sowing the seeds of the plants useful for humans.

Permaculture is a term coined by Bill Mollison in 1978. Permaculture is derived from "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture". For us "permanent agriculture" looks most appropriate. Permaculture also follows the principle of allowing nature to do its job. Permaculture is more methodical or formal than natural farming because usually there is a formal "design" process employed in case of permaculture. Permaculture design involves designing different zones and a pattern of companion plants to help each other.

Note: Bill Mollison and few others have tried to copyright/restrict usage of terms like "permaculture", "permaculture design" and "permaculture design course" in different ways. None of those attempts have been successful. Many applications to statutory/regulatory bodies have been either rejected or withdrawn by the applicant. As far as we know none of the terms related to permaculture are copyrighted or restricted.

Both these philosophies aim at preventing damage to the earth and reversing already done damage. We look at both of them as philosophies for healing the earth where humans help nature to do its best by reducing interference with nature. Both of them shun chemicals like plague. That is what we believe in very strongly - avoid all chemicals, allow nature to do its best. However, we are not purists.  Therefore we treat both natural farming and permaculture as twin children of mother earth. We don't differentiate between them. At the same time we don't mind using natural and non-toxic amendments like lime or micro nutrients when the soil really needs it. We may throw some cow dung manure at our vegetable beds once in a while if we feel the need for it. We may also use some mulch to suppress weeds when needed. Other than that we don't want to interfere with nature. We plan to keep farm animals like cows, dogs, chicken and water birds like ducks to work with nature. By the way, we already have 2 cows with calves and a puppy in our rented house waiting to enter the farm as soon as we construct a house and move into the farm. Our goal is to live a self sustaining life with minimum inputs and dependency on outside world. We will be able to live comfortable and happy life even if the worst kind of economic disaster strikes the world because we will be able to live without cash.

We want to develop a food forest in the forest area of the farm. Forest area has several native trees. You can imagine the number of trees if I say whole ground is covered with several inches thick leaf litter when those trees shed their leaves in winter. Soil is very fertile like in a forest because of these fallen leaves rotting down every year.

Thick layer of leaf litter on the ground

Several fruit trees like custard apple, mango, jack fruit, citrus and cashew are already in the farm.

In last monsoon we planted 3 varieties of guava, custard apple, 2 varieties of sapota, 5 varieties of mango, 5 varieties of citrus, 10 varieties of jack fruit, cinnamon, Indian sour cherry, Singapore cherry, nutmeg, bread fruit, mangosteen, lychee, fig, clove, pomegranate, and butter fruit saplings in approximately 8% of the area (92% more left to be planted!). Almost all the plants except clove have survived so far. This scorching summer is the litmus test for my farming skills. I hope I will be able to keep them alive through this summer. Keeping fingers crossed. Goal is to achieve a permanent system which needs very little maintenance after the plants grow and develop deep roots. After that there is no much work, only enjoy the "fruits" of our labor.
By the way list of saplings I listed above are only one level of canopy in multiple canopy system. Some people say 7 levels, some say 9 levels - let us just say multi level to emphasis the fact that we can get really good productivity by emulating natural forests where plants of different heights grow close to each other producing abundant amount of food. Roughly these are the levels we are going to have in the farm:

• Tall trees
• Short/dwarf trees
• Shrubs
• Herbs
• Tubers/root vegetables (underground)
• Creepers/climbers (climbing on trees and shrubs)

Paddy fields below the forest area had been left fallow (un-cultivated) for last 2 years. Planning to do some paddy this year as an experiment using natural farming technique. Only time will tell the results. I will post a new article about how that experiment goes and the outcome of it. I am planning to sow some seed mixture in the remaining area to avoid weeds growing there. For now we have decided to keep the paddy fields for growing grains. We may convert a part of it to food forest if we find we don't need so much area to grow grains.

Paddy fields left fallow (un-cultivated)

Cashew season begins

My son spotted one cashew fruit fallen on the ground when we were walking in the farm today. Then we walked around and found several dozens of them fallen on the ground.

Bucket full of cashew apples

Biological name of cashew is "Anacardium Occidentale". Anacardium is derived from Greek language. Ana meaning "reverse" or "backwards" and cardium or cardio means "heart". Meaning of the term is one having its heart reversed - that is to say heart of the fruit, the seed, is outside; which is the reverse of vast majority of fruits containing the seed inside the fruit.

Cashew flowers and fruits under development

You are very well aware of tasty cashew nuts (called "kaju" in Hindi which is an adaptation from Portuguese name "caju" for cashew). It is eaten as a nut, dipped in masala and fried to make it a tasty snack, and used in cooking. However, the fruit part is not well known to people; especially city dwellers. Actually it is not a fruit; it is the swollen stalk of the real fruit. Real fruit is the cashew nut hanging below the pseudo fruit securely wrapped in a hard shell with toxic/acidic liquid called urushiol. You will repent if you bite into the shell because the juice burns the skin and causes blisters. People allergic to urushiol get severe skin rashes if touched. This is the main reason why cashew nut is always sold to end users after removing the shell. Cashew processing factories extract the nut shell oil after removing the cashew nut from the shell. This oil is traditionally used as a protective coating on wood to protect wood from rotting and termite attack.

This year I am going to get some amount of cashew nuts. At home it is difficult to remove the shell like the factories do because factories use a special cashew nut cutting machine (manual / semi-automatic / fully automatic) to remove the shell.

Traditionally cashew was processed at homes by burning the shell. In my ancestral home we had a perforated steel plate for this purpose. We used to light a fire, keep the perforated plate on the fire and put the cashew nuts on the plate. Cashew nut shell has highly inflammable oils. It catches fire soon and burns rapidly. Burning process emits beautiful and characteristic smell which goes to far away distances. Whole village will know if one house is burning cashew shells. Burning process should be carefully controlled and the burning nuts should be doused at the right time because:

• Too less burning leaves the urushiol and other toxic contents in the shell. It burns the fingers if one tries to take out the kernel from incompletely burnt shells. Sometimes left over toxic oil that came out of the shell reaches the kernel which makes them inedible.
• Too much burning converts the whole thing into charcoal!

Cashew burning expert in the house knows when to douse the fire and douses it. After dousing the fire and nuts cool down it is the matter of hammering out the outer burnt shell to take out the tasty kernels. By the way, burnt kernels taste better than the factory shelled kernels because burning process introduces new flavors and smells. You can see the whole process in the video below. The guy in the video makes it look so easy. But don't be fooled by that; he is a professional who knows the process very well.

Coming back to the fruit (well, it is a pseudo fruit, I have already told you) it is a very juicy and tasty fruit. It is highly nutritious too. It is very rich in fiber, antioxidants, calcium, phosphorous, iron, vitamin C and potassium. Some sources say it contains 4-5 times more Vitamin C than Orange. Fruit juice boosts immune system. It is also known to kill worms in the digestive system.

Ripe cashew fruit in foreground

Unfortunately several thousand tonnes of this fruit with such good health benefits goes waste every year. Goa is the only state which extracts the famous Feni liquor from it. Selling this fruit is not a commercial success because: (a) Its shelf life is very short - a day or two maximum after plucking from the tree. (b) Being a soft fruit it bruises and is damaged easily. Therefore difficult to transport. (c) It has a strong smell. Some people don't like that kind of strong smell. It is a great fruit to eat if you are not averse to its smell.

Pluck a ripe fruit from the tree, wash it, twist and keep aside the nut, cut it, apply little salt if you like and eat it. You may spit out the fiber if you don't like to swallow it. If you can lay your hands on a cashew apple try it and see if you like it! See you later, I am busy enjoying today's harvest of my cashew apples :-)

Note: Be careful about cashew nuts and fruit if you are allergic to nuts because many people with nut allergy are allergic to cashew nuts too.

The fence

For good or bad previous owner of our farm had not done anything in the farm. Minimum thing a farmer does is protecting his property with a fence. But this person was ultimate - he did not install a fence too. It had become open grazing ground for all the cattle in the village. Forested area of the farm (see The farm) is completely chemical free because nothing (except native forest) was grown in that area. Minimal amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides were used in the paddy fields (see The farm) though.

Cattle grazing in our farm

First thing we wanted to do after taking possession of the land was fencing. Barbed wire fence supported on stone posts is a common type of fencing in this place. Back of the envelope calculation showed we need approximately 2 lakh (2,00,000.00) rupees for the fence. Spending so much for not environmental friendly thing (stone mining and barbed wire making both are environmentally damaging) did not make lot of sense.

Then we started search for environment friendly option. It came in the form of several dead bamboo colonies in our farm. Bamboo flowers once in several decades - it is specific to the bamboo species. See Bamboo Flowering Habits for more information. Bamboo species here is believed to flower once in 30 or 40 years. Whole bamboo colony dies after the bamboo flowers. In last 2-3 years most of the native bamboo species here have flowered, produced seeds and died. This left us with around 10 dead bamboo colonies with loads of bamboo. We decided to cut the bamboo and use that for fencing.

Dead bamboo colony

Note: People in this area believe bamboo flowering brings natural calamities like drought. In a way it turned out to be true because this year we had major rain short fall. Hopefully that situation will resolve in coming monsoon.

Bamboo colonies are structurally very strong. All the bamboos get meshed into each other through the branches which gives them immense strength to withstand wind force and water currents. Therefore they are very good wind breaks and erosion protection devices. However, that strength makes it very difficult to cut and separate them. Already difficult work is further made difficult because of thorns on the bamboos. Those thorns are almost 1 inch long and very strong. They easily penetrate footwear and prick the foot if one steps on those thorns.

We found Mr. Bangarappa and Iranna to help us with the fence. Bangarappa though young is very knowledgeable about agriculture activities. He smartly optimizes his work so that he gets more work done with least effort. Iranna is aged, has lot of experience. Their team was very good for our work. They have helped us with most of the farm work so far.

Bangarappa (left) and Iranna (right)

These two brave hearts climbed the bamboo colony without any safety equipment, untangled the bamboos, and cut them. They had to spend almost a week on top of the very thorny bamboo colony to get enough bamboo for the fence work.

After couple of weeks we had beautiful and environment friendly fence :-)

Beautiful environment friendly fence

Best fence is live fence - a fence made up of live plants. It is best because:

• It costs only a small fraction of artificial fences. You trade off time to reduce the cost when you install live fence.
• It keeps growing, and repairs itself as long as some care is taken to maintain favorable conditions for growth. This means fence may need some watering under severe drought conditions.
• It can be very useful if we grow useful plants as live fence. For example a live fence can provide fodder for animals, medicines, fire wood, help honey bees to produce more honey, can act as a beautiful wall around the property, etc.

Kinds of plants that can be grown as live fence are:

• Grow thorny plants like Caesalpinia bonducella (Gajjaga in Kannada). Thorns keep the animals away. However thorny plants don't differentiate between us and animals; they prick everyone. It becomes very difficult to work near the fence once we install thorny fence. Also, it becomes difficult for people walking on the road next to the fence. Therefore we did not consider thorny plants.
• Grow useful plants like Gliricidia, Subabul etc. They make good fence when grown sufficiently close and the gap between them is blocked using bamboo or some other strong material. I have plans to use thickly growing creeper/climber like Madhu Malati to block the gaps between closely grown trees along the fence. Madhu Malati grows vigorously and thickly. When in full bloom it looks beautiful. Any way we need the fence, why not make it a beautiful too?

Live fence is a long term game. It takes several years for a strong live fence to come up. In last monsoon I sowed Gliricidia seeds along the fence hoping to jump start live fence. Unfortunately the company that sold seeds gave us dead seeds. Not even one seed germinated. This year planning to buy Gliricidia seeds from some other source and try our luck!

The farm

Our farm is 7 kms from Sagara town. Sagara has several places of tourist interest. Being on western ghats this area has good forest cover and pleasant weather. I have shot couple of video tours of the farm in June-2015. Videos were shot from my phone as I walked around in the farm. Therefore they are little jerky, please excuse me for that. YouTube offered to fix the jerkiness. I did not take that option because it blurred the videos. There is no sound track mixed with the videos. Sounds you hear are all natural sounds of the farm and me walking through the thick grass cover on the ground. Hope you find them interesting.

Total area of the farm is 6 acres. Farm is a joint venture between my and few of my close friends. Farm has 2 distinct areas. There is one area of higher elevation with trees. This area is a typical western ghat forest with many native plants. First video is 10 minutes walk through in the forest area.

Area of lower elevation is paddy field with a small stream next to it. Second video covers the paddy field and the stream. This video is also close to 10 minutes.

The decision

My 4 year old son was having frequent episodes of cold and blocked nose. When I asked his doctor about this he joked "Cold will not leave him as long as you live in Bangalore and he has nose". Though it was a joke it made me and my wife take it seriously. We questioned ourselves "Why are we living in the city?". There was no convincing answer for the question.

My wife is a home maker - she does not go out for work. My son had decided school is waste of time and quit school when he entered UKG. Thanks to a professional disaster which later turned out to be a professional freedom - I was working from home most of the days. I went to office only once a week just to meet others in office. We were not visiting malls every weekend to kill time. Have not been to a multiplex in several years. We were not (and are not) addicted to pizza or any other junk food available only in cities. There was no reason to be in a city. So the question was - are we living in the city just to breathe toxic air, drink toxic water and eat toxic vegetables and fruits supplied to the city? Only logical thing to do after this realization was leaving the city. I spoke to my friends and partners at work place. I am very thankful to them since they fully supported and encouraged me to move out of the city. We were out of the city within 15 days of making the decision.

We wanted to buy a small piece of farm land in Sirsi. A close relative had a house available for rent in Sirsi. We rented that house and moved to Sirsi in mid September 2013. Move was smooth. Started enjoying the clean air, water and food without chemicals. When it came to buying farm land in Sirsi it turned out to be impossible thing because of crazy value demanded by the land owners in Sirsi area. Therefore I had to leave Sirsi and move to Sagara to make it happen.

Update on 12-Mar-2016: Happy news - a close friend's family has made the decision of moving to Sagara from Bangalore. He has rented a house near beautiful village Heggodu of NINASAM fame. As per plan they should be in Sagara by 19-Mar-2016.

Update on 25-Mar-2016: My friend's family has moved to Heggodu on 21-Mar-2016. We welcome them to Sagara, to healthy and happy life. We wish all the best for them and hope they will enjoy the place as much as we do.

About

This blog is about my move from IT world to farming and my family's move from city to a village. In this blog I have documented our reasons for leaving the city and starting farming. Everybody has his/her reasons for doing what they are doing. Therefore take it only as documentation of my thoughts and our experiences; not as suggestion that anybody should do it. I hope this blog gives you one perspective of high-tech (farming) vs. low-tech (information technology). Oh, yes that is what I believe - our farmers deal with lot more complexity and uncertainty than what we deal with in IT field. I am saying "we" because I am still a software architect too. Therefore I have first hand experience of both fields to comment about them. I would love to hear your views about what I write here - please do comment if you like.

Happy reading.