Experiences on my Farm Journey - 2nd year

Hi, People who don't know me, or reading this blog, its in continuation of my first year blog.

Here's the link for the first year blog:

https://meneelima.blogspot.com/2022/08/experiences-on-my-farm-journey.html

Our Five-layer Model progress:

Lemon was not at all growing in our farm may be because of water logging. It had very poor growth, on the contrary Guava was growing very well.

Banana was struggling initially, but it started picking up. We have around 10 flowers now,which is a good sign. Two banana pods ripened , though they were small the bananas tasted heavenly.

Initially drumstick was struggling quite a bit , but now many drumstick plants picked up as rains were less this year. Many drumstick plants gave flowers and the flowers are turning to pods now. We were thinking to interchange drumstick with agase as agase was also a nitrogen fixer and it was growing better in our farm. But later looking at the drumstick growth

We bought more chikoo and Guava, as chikoo and Guava were doing good in our land, We bought from GKVK.

We tasted our banana,guava,drumsticks,sapota and they all tasted so good.

Malabar teak, Agase, Bamboo, Sugarcane:

Malabar teak near our container grew close to 12 feet height now.

Agase grew very fast, and gave pods too.

Bamboo was doing well too.

Sugarcane we plucked multiple times and enjoyed sugarcane juice at least 10 times. We all enjoyed the juice only that we need to keep requesting the juice fellows to juice our own sugarcane even though we pay a little money.  The below picture is my in-laws with fat (~6inch dia) naturally grown red sugar cane at my container-home. 

Sweet Potato:

Sweet Potato, kept growing well and was occupying land very fast. It was a good live mulch to put and then we can put multiple cuttings by just cutting and replanting it . We took few cuttings from home and just multiplying from that we were able to get around 50kg of Sweet potato for the whole year.

Story of Pulses and Toor Dal:

Instead of leaving land empty and we thought to make it fertile, by growing dicots. Dicots help in nitrogen fixing in the land.

We put Toor dal in 2.5 acres and in remaining 2 acres we put green moong, urad, alasandhe and avrekai, Avrekai got lot of pests compared to others and I was wondering how many chemicals must have been sprayed by farmers who were growing it chemically. I had a descent alasandhe, green moong and urad dal crop. But since we put seeds using tractor so much density was not possible, we thought of using a seed wheel next time. Green moong, urad, avrekai, alasandhe are smaller plants so higher density can be used.I decorated all the dals and created the below beautiful memory.

Toor dal we had a reasonable produce of 190 kg on the overall, for a first time this was not so bad.

There was a machine which separated the Toor from the leaves, just in an hours’ time. We mixed red soil in that Toor and then dried them to preserve for longer times. We then gave them to the mill to split and produce Toor Dal with skin. Two ladies came to split the skin and then bang, the Toor dal is ready. 

Saving Seeds:

We also saved our own seeds(a little bit of toor dal and avrekai) for the next year of one variety. I also sent 6 people seeds from my own saving for free including the courier charges were born by me. It surely gave me a sense of satisfaction.

APMIP:

AP government had a policy that gave some subsidy on pipes. Subsidy was 70% if land on our name was bigger than 5 acres. This subsidy was available once in 7 years. We deposited our 30% amount first and after two months we got our pipes. This is the first time ever we got something from the government.

Foes turn Friends:

In our first year the farmer opposite to us challenged us openly that grow for 10 years organically/naturally I will see. Surprisingly he asked 50 kg Toor dal for their family consumption. This is surely a triumph for us 😊 that he came around to encourage us. Though we didn’t sell to him , my toor dal got sold among friends itself.

My husband tries to give lift to as many people near the village roads as buses are very less. He gets blessings and made few friends along knowing our natural produce nearby people started to offer help and slowly, they started giving ideas to make things a little better at our farm.

We got help from an organic coordinator also nearby who consistently keeps an eye on our farm when we are not around and also helps with buying seeds.

We got help in sharing few plants, seeds and even for sales through friends.

Watermelon Story:

My labourer’s son grew watermelon in his farm. He didn’t have full money to put this crop. He put them on a leased land and 2-3 people together invested and grew them. In Bangalore, the price of watermelon was around 20-25 per kg. Our labourer’s son got 6 rupees per kg, for three months of his effort and the middlemen who buy from farmers and supply to the market make money in just one day. Overall, it was a loss for the labourer’s son and the people who invested together fought how much they should take for their share. If you can and have access to please buy from a farmer directly. Though he has to bear the transportation cost, the final price he will get when he sells to a direct consumer it is better.

 

Tomato Story:

Our farm is in Annamayya district and its around an hour drive from Madanpalle. Madanpalle is famous for growing tomatoes and probably is one of the biggest tomato markets in India. So, most of farmers grow tomatoes nearby and it is heavily monocropped. My neighbour put tomato fully in 1 acre initially. The price was good and he made some money. Later they put tomato in remaining 4 acres. The price at the time of ripening in Bangalore was 5 rupees per kg in vegetable shop. He made a big loss and they threw away all the tomatoes.

Wonder why people still depend on a single crop rather than putting multiple crops. Year after year they continue to loose money. Just 3 months of hard work and effort went waste. If they had at least mixed the crops, there would have been lesser loss.

 

Turmeric Story:

Our turmeric produce was very less and not that great. Turmeric was not so much intercropped and there were too many weeds and there was not much market in Karnataka for sale. Still whatever produce I got I sold for a reasonable price. I sold between 380 to 480 depending on weight but when I asked to sale to a person who supplies to all organic stores, she said 110-125 rupees while they sell at a much higher price (500-800 rupees) to all the stores. Curcumin percentage testing cost was 1000 and to test chemicals in that 6000 was the cost coated in Bengaluru. For a small farmer like me who had very little to sale, I felt these testing costs were too additional, I didn’t get it tested but sold among my good friends directly.

Overall, as yield was less, Turmeric was a loss for us overall. There was additional effort to boil the raw turmeric and then dry it for close to 15 days. But it was good to know all details of testing and how bad is the open market for farmers. For small farmers pesticide testing cost is also very high.

What I sold in the last year in small quantity:

Jeevamrutham , Agase flowers &leaves, Mango Ginger  

Chilli  Sweet , Potato Lemon Grass, Turmeric 

 AlasandheToor Dal & Toor Dal Pods, Finger Millet

Herbal Bath Powder, Sugar cane, Raw Banana, Flat beans

Corn Flour, Corn Rawa, Avare, Rasam Powder and Drumsticks.

Incoming & Outgoing/Balance Sheet :

Our Expenses:

Fixed Labour Charges: 1,80,000 

Transport Expenses: 34,000

Seeds + Seedlings + Fruit Plants: 20,000

Turmeric Seeds + Labour:16,000

Tractor Charges:24000

Jaggery + Horsegram(For Jeevamrutham):20,000

Additional Labour Charges: 10,000

Fencing (One Time):60,500

Feed Cost for Cows:18,000

Toor Dal Separator Cost:2400

Motor Expenses (One Time):6,000

New cement poles for electricity(One Time): 62000

Miscelllaneous:2000

TOTAL: 4,54,900

Removing One Time Expenses Total:3,32,000

 

Our Income:

Turmeric Sale:9,660

Toor dal & Toor dal based product Sale: 26,000

Mango Ginger Sale:500

Vegetable Sale : 6000

Vegetables & Fruits for Our Consumption at home : 6000

Finger Millet Sale:1000

Avare & Alasandhe:500

Jeevamrutham: 4000

TOTAL: 53660

I could recover around 16% of my cost for the first year which was not bad since my perennials(fruit trees) haven’t started to yield yet.

But there is a joy that I am able to eat my own grown food which is naturally grown and also able to feed naturally grown food to my friends.

Everyone who bought Herbal bath powder made out of toor dal,Bavancha,Vetiver,Sugandha Karjooram,turmeric came back and gave very good feedback for it.

Youtube Videos:

In the last year that passed, from whatever experiences we got from the farm and what we implemented we made the below videos and uploaded on my channel.

https://youtu.be/DhBedzPuWtQ :  musugu or cap brinjal different stages

https://youtu.be/VJuNQiu4fqU :  Jeevamrutham mixing and supplying tank design

https://youtu.be/97BE9cQYKfM :  white, red sweet Potato, 6 varieties 

https://youtu.be/tSxDbXrz2cg : container home at our aranya farm

https://youtu.be/gfixv03mvrI?si=ZVqsI0XgHMtOtzMa :  Red drumstick flower and tree

Gratitude :

Gratitude to Subbayya Garu who keeps an eye on our farm and also helps in buying all ingredients for Jeevamrutham and seeds sometimes.

Gratitude to all my friends who bought to encourage me,specially Padmaja who coordinated all Hyderabad orders for toor dal and other produce. I was wondering if i would be able to sale without Padmajas help.

Gratitude to universe for all the rains which came in last 2 years and a little rain which came this year (It looks like this year is going to be an year of drought and all our ponds dried up).

Gratitude to Gangulappa and his wife for taking care of our farm and our cows.

Gratitude to Ashok sir for arranging the cement poles at less cost.

Gratitude for all the plants,trees,insects,birds,herbs,flowers which gave a sense and essence to my farm. I love you.

Gratitude to our cow Lakshmi who gave birth to a beautiful male calf , My younger son named it Abhimanyu(A name from his Kannada lesson). Heres Abhimanyu for you.

Experiences on my farm journey

 

My journey on our organic farm:

I attended a two-day conference in M.S. Ramaiah college on natural farming by Padmashri Subash Palekar Ji. I got heavily influenced by this and decided to buy a farmland to provide natural food. After searching for couple of years, we finalized on one and bought around 9 acres in Andhra Pradesh.  Its around 115km from my home in Bengaluru. All around the farm there is only chemical farming.  People all around discouraged us from natural farming. There were not many people willing to work/help us as they believe that we won’t make any money.  But we were not the ones to relent. We told them we don’t care about what we get in return for now.  We have jobs and we could sustain for some time. One guy opposite to our farm openly challenged that you see for 10 years and then tell me if any tree grows. I just smiled and thought God will help me in my good endeavor and irrespective of what anyone says, lets move on and good things to do and good things are yet to come.

We kind of had 3 divisions in our land. In the first division, I choose SPNF five-layer farming model.  There are what I put in the five layers.

Mango, Lemon, Amla, Sitaphal, Banana, Moringa, Horse gram.

SPNF 5 layer mango model : 

In the second division, I put the below.

Mango, Chikkoo, guava, rose apple.

For borders, we put mahagony, tamarind, coconut, star fruit, avocado.

Intention to put so many varieties was not to make losses in a single crop and to avoid mono cropping.

Monocropping is growing a single variety. If we grow a single variety , then the soil will be deficient in nutrients as similar plants absorb the same nutrient. Best is to mix different varieties together.

 We also put few exotic /native varieties for our consumption. 

Lakshman  phal,  ram sita phal, litchi, rambutan, rudraksha, soapnut, agase, surinam cherry, dragon fruit, regu pandu, wood apple, mahagony, Malabar teak,  Neem,  Pongemia and  rose wood.

I put a small portion of veggies for our home consumption and that excess I started selling to my friends in our layout. Few people are happy to buy, and few didn’t show much interest. But most of my close friends and relatives were all showing interest in buying the organic produce. The only problem is the transportation costs and the problem of perishability with fresh produce. I am trying to increase my reach for selling my organic produce. 

My husband brings the produce when he goes, but if he goes only to get the vegetables, it would turn out  to be costly as petrol is too expensive.  We enquired about bus service, from a village near by to check if  our care taker can send a bag  by bus and we could collect that from the bus in Bengaluru. We tried it once and it turned out to be reasonable. We were planning to do this more frequently.  Also we started having about new greens which the villagers eat and we started having them too.

How we started.

The land which we bought was chemical farmed before and we had to turn it around to make it organic. Since our main aim was to grow fruits and a little portion of veggies.  Through some contacts, I got one lorry  of good compost from TTD (or probably who take waste from Tirupati). It costed me around 58K for a lorry but compost quality was good. 

              After Lakshmi’s(Lakshmi is our cow) arrival at farm we started making jeevamrutham and applying to plants. We planted  horse gram all around fruit trees for nitrogen fixation. We put Mexican sunflower stems all around so that we can we use the stems for mulching.

To improve the soil quality we put PKM1 & Bhagya varieties of Moringa. PKM1 is used as a good mulch as well.  The growth of fruit trees has been slow compared to the growth of fruit trees at my Bangalore home, and we are only patiently waiting for the trees to grow.

In the second and third division we had land empty our first big crop we planted was 120kg of turmeric. In the remaining land we put toor dal and alasande and averekaya.

Profitability  & Money:

Not to  waste my vegetable produce  I started a small whatspp group, adding few of my friends and posting on a google from, my sale is around 400 to 600rs per post as of now, as my produce is quite small, but I started digesting a truth that money is difficult to come by in farming.

Labour charges are  500 per male and 350 per female per day. For me the external expenditure was only the compost initially and jaggery, horse gram for jeevamrutham and on Lakshmi.  The best model would be to be able to sell directly to consumers to be able to get a fair price for what I grow, but logistics of transport  and distribution make it difficult to sell directly to consumer . Hope someday I can make some profit.

Irrespective of all this, the feelings of enjoying the fresh air from our container, able to just pluck and eat  or  pluck, look at eat what grows in your own farm, enjoying the best in nature is just priceless. The peacock calls in the morning, infinite sky and nature around are just priceless.

Everyone should own a piece of land. Slowly people around also started to understand and respected us for the organic farming which we are trying to do and feeling started sinking in to them “Yes they are for real and they are here to stay and don’t intend to harm anyone with their food produce.”

Water melon, carrot, tomato, beans, muskmelon, corn. These are the cash crops they generally grow nearby. When we sowed turmeric,  few came and appreciated you are growing something which we haven’t grown in this place and we are happy to see that you are introducing a new crop to our area. My only wish is to see if people all around our farm could produce organic/natural so that human race can get rid of all diseases like cancer.

Weather:

Weather is probably a big factor to consider. We had torrent of rains last and this year. There is a lot of water clogging all around. We need to make more trenches for the water and better absorbability needs to be planned.

Arrival of Lakshmi:

Since we follow, ZBNF/SPNF, making jeevamrutham and supplying to plants was essential. We found that a person had naati cow in a village nearby. But coordinating to get urine and dung from that cow and  that  farmer was very difficult. So my husband decided to buy a cow and he selected a beautiful white one. He called me from the farm and said I bought a cow and its on the farm already. I was not ready to settle for any name other than “Lakshmi” for the cow. We don’t have any pets in Bangalore in our home, so Lakshmi was a treat for my children. They fed it bananas, chikkoos  and watermelon. The cow had  beautiful eyes. My children also started to take out her for grazing.  Just before Pongal this year  Lakshmi gave birth to a baby girl. “Pure white” beauty it was. My husband was very excited and he went all the way to the farm to just see the new born. The villagers made fun that you have a girl in your family (both my children are male).  We named the calf Sindhu, Dumbu ( my younger son) is very fond of Sindhu. Whenever Dumbu ran Sindhu used to run behind him.  Jeevamrutham mix supply got set with Lakshmi.  The only disadvantage with having Lakshmi around was that whenever children got a break from online-classes, they used to run to Sindhu and it  was very difficult to bring them back to attend the class after the break 😃

Container:

We bought a container home and placed the container at a height by raising pillars. Most of the villagers were amused at it and we kept getting visitors who wanted to  see how it looks like. We also became famous in the locality for bringing a container home. We went to a nearby lake which was overflowing last year because of rains. A vendor who was selling  condiments  asked us you are the owner who put the container. Me and my husband smiled 😊.

our container below: 

 Government policies:

While what happened in Sri Lanka are lessons to be learned, not to make an abnormal shift to organic or natural farming, the government policies are lopsided. Government still gives subsidy on chemical pesticides and fertilizers. This should go away and organic farmers need a platform for encouragement and sales. Individual private people are able to achieve a lot more by educating and support. Government recent policy to support one crop per district unfortunately promotes monocropping and should be avoided as per me. Mass camps and education are needed to educate farmers on usage of chemicals and their effect on human health and soil erosion and depletion of soil quality because of chemical usage.

Motors and finding depth of water (technology usage).

The only place where technology got used in farming is measuring the depth of water source andwater source it at all any by sending small pen camera sending into the borewell and viewing the camera output in the laptop on the ground and this entire procedure needs to checked in the late night once it is dark and it is completely new to me. Most of the villagers don’t have the smart phones and still use the old kind of phones.

Commission:

My husband rarely used to take cash when he visited the farm.  But he needed it for many works, since many farmers didn’t have smart phones for doing phone pay or google pay. I asked him  how do you manage?  He  said he will transfer via phone-pay/g-pay to another person and he gives in cash if needed. He takes a commission of 1%  for the same. I was baffled by it and there are lot of  middle man who take commission for easy small work. Everyone wants money now and villages are not any  different.

Time:

Time for a software/hardware engineer is very important and every sec matters for go-live or tape-out, often they work as if there is no tomorrow.  Time is at dead-slow in villages. If there is a marriage in the village, the whole village celebrates it and there is no-one available to work as labors. Once the rainy season started we need to wait for ox/tractor to be free. Work which is expected to take a day could often 10-days or more and time is very slow.

Hen and its eggs:

We are vegetarians and 90% vegan now so we don’t have any hen in our land. But my labourer bought hens and he put in our land. Hen lays eggs at the same place on every day and it lays one egg per day. It was amusing to see this for me as it was new experience and we never saw it before. After finishing laying eggs, the mother sits on the eggs and comes out from that place only to eat its food.

 Before you buy:

Check accessibility to the farmland. It helps if you have road access till the farm. If no road access check if the road does not  turn muddy during monsoon and the road is still motorable during monsoon. Check if you have 24hrs electricity line to the farm  or an agriculture one. For agriculture, government supplies only 8hrs per day  to our farm. So if would like to stay at the farm you need to spend additionally solar and inverter ( if you intend to do  WFH or work from farm  or so… etc).

Government provides subsidies based on how much land you have. You are eligible for subsidy if you have less than 5 acres in Andhra Pradesh. DO a split registration on multiple names ( among your family members of course) to avail subsidy.

We realized that our land had a slope or it was low lying compared to other areas bearby and when it rains  Water floods into our farm heavily. We started to put trees in the high areas rather than the low ones.  There were too  much rains in the first year of our planting itself.

My learnings:

Following ZBNF five layer mango model I decided not to even till the  land as I  was  planting trees and it was getting late for planting trees  also ( we planted in august mid). No till and no deweed were done.  Papaya  plants which we bought were small in height  and are difficult to recognize among the tall  plants. Buy fruit plants which are at least 3.5 to 4ft in height if you can when u don’t till the land.

Since we didnt not till and deweed we couldn’t put the nitrogen fixes plants at the right locations. Instead we choose to put horse gram all around  the fruit plants. We put too many and the horse gram climbed the fruit trees, not allowing the fruit  trees to grow. Put just 3 to 4 seeds of horse gram not more.

Five layer model had plants just spaced at 4.5 feet among each other. De weeding is a challenge with that small spacing. Its probably better to change that distance to 9 feet so that the tractor can go in between two plants to dewed or till the land.

Buying with friends

If you are planning to buy with friends,

è please get aligned on your piece of land and his/her piece of land before the registration itself. Please don’t go for combined registration.

è Align on what he/she wants to grow organically or not. There is no point in joining or combining with a friend who doesn’t show interest in organic farming.

è Please discuss all the terms and conditions before the registration itself and also discuss on exit policy if you can.

è How much money each of you want to spend in an year and are you aligned on that ?

W  What crops would you like to grow ? Are you aligned on that ?

è Is it for enjoyment or earning money?  It would be better to discuss on all the things before the registration itself. It would be good for both of you.

My biggest challenges:

          My biggest challenge has been control of weeds till now. I don’t still know what is the best way to manage it.

Tributes/courtesy/gratitudes:

We have just started on our journey and its our first anniversary of plantation of fruit trees on 16^th Aug 2021. We want to convert our land into a food forest in future , waiting for all the fresh produce to come. I would like to THANK all the below people for making it happen. This blog is collection of what I did and what I learnt and what I experienced.

My husband (most of the ground work done by him).

My parents (all the while supporting us)

Ramani mam and Raju garu ( Ramani aunty always supports us with the seeds as we never have time to go out and buy them and Raju garu always gives us tremendous knowledge on equipment and technical specification checking before buying the instruments).

Padma , for helping on how to make google forms and providing all the contacts.

My friends in layout cascading meadows, who are my first customers in buying the small produce whatever we have.

Rajesh Reddy garu, land owner of opposite site, for the moral support and helping us on issues with locals.

Naveen garu, for helping and providing the composting contact.

Rachana Reddy, my guru from where I learnt and continue to learn. I put Mexican sunflowers and lot of mulberry for mulching based on her advise. She continues to educate on multiple things.

Narendra and Bharti, We bought the land together with them , Narendra for all the initial help & Bharti for her sumptuous dishes 

Sohan Shetty sir, for guiding on auger machine and providing the details of organic certification.

Kullayappa, who lives in the next village for providing all the support for bringing the plants, initial manure for the ground preparation, supporting the guidance on entire establishment.

Vijay garu, for providing the guidance on vastu for construing the shed and water tank and cow shed and etc.

Ramana, for helping the construction of sheds with his team and providing all the immediate attention for anything while we live in Bangalore.

Aalam, for helping on our container installation, balcony and additional bathroom construction and making the furniture of our 1BHK beautiful container home more livable.

Life @ Lockdown

In India we are at the 5th week of lockdown while at work its 6th/7th week of lockdown.
Well, how has life been.....

Initially I laughed of at corona disease as something funny and strange as in last 40 years of my life I
have not heard or seen anything like that . The funny and strange thing changed to fear as lot of news of deaths came from all parts of the world.....  slowly another realization also came that this to here to stay  much longer  and has a serious impact.

In the first week of lockdown itself my younger one feel sick with severe toothache , the dentists place was closed as it was not an essential service . I called the lady doctor , and requested her to see my younger one. She accepted graciously to come and opened the clinic, and did an x-ray to show his tooth decay and prescribed some medicines .I thanked the dentist and her husband for opening the clinic at this time on my request. Undue respect for all the health workers..

Lots of plans during summer vacation especially all related to my favourite gardening had to be postponed because of lockdown. Disappointing indeed! I had plans to beautify my garden, visit couple of orchid gardens, and learn.  Everything went for a toss... in summer the schools are closed, so parents do get some time to plan on their activities. This year it won't happen.  While most of  my plans changed, there are lot of positives which came later.

My husband helped me with dishes daily, my eleven year old son helped me with the mops, I watched my younger one count on his little fingers, so cute. Never ever I have spent so many days with them. All the while there was guilt that I don't spend enough time with them... Now it was so much time with them, outside of the working hours though..

From myside I pulled out all my craft supplies from inside, I took out time to combine few plants together and make this...………………….

I took out time to clean my closets and my children closets too. I pulled out a peepal weed on the road and started a bonsai which I have never  done before. Here is the look prior and after planting.. and my younger one's toys are a priority in it :) . Waiting for it to survive and thrive, so that I could give a shape to it..

It was peak summer and me and my husband watered 50 young trees in our layout and I am proud to say we took care of them and thanks to few summer rains, they are thriving and healthy. As a family we took out and prepared 6-7 grow bags and pots and put in few vegetable seeds. They are sprouting now  and its  an absolute delight to watch them.  I cleared another small patch and sowed more vegetable seeds....

I started making few dishes as going out is ruled out … and my kids are also enjoying a bit of baking too...

Bonus of all...
 My parents stay nearby but I never spent so much time with them before. Now I go out for a walk with them daily for 30-40 minutes and they are happy to see me spend time with them. I lost 3 kgs of weight dieting in the night with soup or fruit. Believe me from last few years I have never been able to do that and feel happy about the new me.  Two zoom calls with college friends and catching up with few after 18years was lot of fun. Overall it has been a good 6 weeks of my lockdown life so far.. Watching the sun set daily and the mix of all colours in the sky has been my favourite too... we rarely get this chance while at work .. The little pleasures of life...

I do miss office a bit, my lunch friends and longing to see a bright and healthy future for my kids and the entire human kind in all. My prayers and best wishes for all the health workers, together we all will overcome , until then stay home and stay safe. I have paid my maids in full even when they haven't worked in full for me... please be emphathetic towards them. Here's me signing off...

 

Save K.R.Puram Lake

My home is approximately around 4.5 km from the KR Puram Lake . This lake is the nearest big water body to my home. I took a stroll once or twice before as my children liked to play in the small children's park at the entrance and once i remembering taking a small boat ride. Later for couple of years haven't visited it again.

  Lots of whats app messages this year, that Bengaluru is going to run out of water from taps in 2020. Chennai is already facing it this year and looks our turn is going to come next year... Fingers crossed, i hope this situation never comes.. The monsoon this year really looks grim , Pretty much June being entirely dry with no rains in Bengaluru and July had very little rains ...  water has taken prime importance and focus now , PM Narendra Modi bringing the topic of ThimmaiPalli in Telengana
"The construction of the water-tank in Telangana's Thimmaipalli is changing the lives of the people of the village" in Mann ki Baat . The formation of Jal Shakti Ministry is another one in this direction.
In July this year , the parliament discussion went on till mid night for two days, the main topic was on farmers and all problems from which farmers suffer the most, water  being one of them.

   While government is trying to do what they can, we as citizens need to participate and do whatever we can. I received a whats app invite to join the save KR Puram lake group . I joined it and understood the lake has been neglected from quite some time and is in a pathetic condition. Couple of ground meetings and the volunteering work started at the lake from one and half months now.... I care for environment and couldn't spend so much time because of young kids before . I had some guilt about not spending time . Till mid-life life is all about settling down and securing your future. The after mid-life should be about giving back to the society.. Thats what i believe in... If there is energy and space to volunteer early than the mid life you are in the best place to be. Now my kids are grown up a bit and i am able to volunteer some time on sunday mornings for an hour. I volunteered 4 to 5 times till now and feel completely happy about it... 

 Some volunteers are able to come and help physically , some offering monetary help and some offering every other kind of help which is possible. Please do whatever you can.. This is our water resource and lets all contribute towards it . See you on the coming sunday @ 6.30 to 8.30 AM.A big shout out to all the volunteers who are coming to spend their only free time in sundays.... Lets make it happen

                     

small changes can lead to a big change

I used to stay in Kundanahalli 5 years back in a small apartment. The area which was in closer proximity to whitefield looked fairly neat(no so much garbage everywhere) except that the road condition leading to vibgyor was pathetic and I think it continues to be pathetic today. While I shifted , there was mounds of plastic bags in my kitchen rack and I wondered how much plastic I accepted and got home.


I moved to T.C palya to my own independent home at this point . My present home is slightly in a remote area, but I stay in a layout which has atleast close to 1000 + trees in an 23 acre area. God bless this layout for its greenery. My home falls under Gram Panchayat and not really under BBMP. I work as an electronics engineer in Mahadevpura. While I pass from my home to office , there are atleast 4 big garbage piles or black spots on the road. What has all this garbage have .. ? Pretty much only plastic . These spots make me feel sad , that we all turned Bangalore into a Garbage city... Though I wasn't one who was throwing garbage here.


My favourite past time and relaxation is gardening and I chanced upon Balaji Organics near to Mahaveer Chalet. Thanks to Sandeep , the owner, I first got exposed to making compost on my own. From here, I kind of completely stopped sending any food waste out from my house. He added me to a whats app group and I started getting to know of lot of eco friendly events in Bangalore.


I met Padma on the group and her energy as an eco-volunteer was awesome and continues to be awesome . Padma works as an IT engineer and has 2 young kids herself , but she exhibits an amazing enthusiasm. Padma exposed me to a BBMP event, composting Santhe and I bought a leaf composter @Soilandhealth.in. Through Padma we came to know that there is a re-use cutlery for free use in KRpuram rising ward. We have had atleast 4-5 events just in our layout using these cutlery for our functions. We saved atleast close to 1000 single use disposables. we donated small ice cream steel cups too so that people can use them. We had a birthday party for my son at a hotel , but we forced the hotel guys to use the steel glasses which we borrowed from KRpuram rising. The hotel guy obliged and was happy to use them . I don't know why people think single use disposables are in Fashion. The so called paper plates too have plastic lining inside …. Following us, Four families in our layout borrowed the same too.. So happy we were able to influence and change others. Here is a pic of my leaf composter....

After composting the food waste, my garbage got reduced significantly and I was sending the garbage out once in one and half to two weeks. I made another change, I stopped buying packaged food at super markets. We take empty containers from home as much as possible and re-fill at the provision stores. I purchase at super markets only those stuff which is not available at the provision stores. With this my one bucket of plastic/paper garbage goes out once in 3 weeks.


Once in a while me and husband eat breakfast outside when I am too lazy to cook or I end up getting late. My husband loves idli and we used to go to a small hotel to munch breakfast. We discovered the hotel fellow bakes idli in plastic sheets and atleast packs 600 parcels per day in plastic covers. We stopped eating idli. We confronted the hotel fellow and he says idli doesn't bake properly on cloth. I hope the health inspector really raids this place one day and charges him heavily. The hotel owner is making so much money for his kids, unfortunately money can't buy clean soil,air and water. Is "Time is money" really worth it ?


My connections on whats app group increased and I landed in Prof Nagabhushan's Back to nature group. Nagabhushan sir works at MS Ramaiah as a Chemistry professor and every week tries to organize a program on Nature or on ZBNF farming. Through him I attended Subash Palekar's  Terrace gardening workshop. This training was an eye opener on lot of things with Subash Palekar questioning the number of things we really need in life from the time we wake up. " IT Bacteria" was Subhash Palekar's favourite Phrase. This event was attended by close to 2000 + people from Bangalore and neighbouring farmers of Bangalore. The event was a zero plastic event with steel cutlery used for every meal. Kudos to Nagabhushan sir and his great volunteers for organizing such an event. I am sure we can all try for a zero waste event.


Social media took me to another Terrace gardening whats app group . Raghunandan Sir  and volunteers have help setup close to 252 Terrace gardens voluntarily in Bangalore on weekends. Kudos to him and all the volunteers for all their contributions. My gardening skills got toned a bit now.


After getting an invite to attend the birthday party of a Miyawaki forest in Railway colony KRpuram I met Praveen . Praveen is another volunteer who makes bio enzymes out of fruit peels,Jaggery and water. He was kind enough to come to our layout and do a free session. Bio enzyme is not made of chemicals and can be used for floor cleaning and utensil cleaning and bathroom cleaning . I  learnt to make them and use them at my home for cleaning purpose. I bid bye to the fancy cleaning stuff.
Bio-enzyme pic..

From April 4th , our wedding anniversary this year, we started carrying two bowls,spoons and glasses with us . Any snack we want to have outside, we would like to use them to reduce the single use disposables.


KRpuram Rising has Volunteers like Sreeram sir, who waters atleast 200 plants a day which don't belong to him. Purushottam Sir , who volunteers on lot more things and keeps a note of the re-use cutlery , He is a water warrior himself.


Bangalore is brimming with scores of volunteers who are all making a change. I learnt and made these changes. If i can make a change I am sure lot of you can do too..


While I write this article , the black spots on the way to office still remain..Through this blog , if I can make or see someone change, the purpose of writing this blog is served.


Dedicated to Sandeep,Padma,Praveen,Nagabhushan Sir,Raghunandan sir,Sreeram Sir  and Purushottam sir and scores of eco-warriors in Bangalore. U all are doing a great Job and are so selfless.