Experiences on my farm journey - Year 3

For people who don’t know me, these are my earlier blogs and this blog is a continuation of my journey of my natural farm:

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

https://meneelima.blogspot.com/2023/09/experiences-on-my-farm-journey-2nd-year.html

It was a very challenging year at the farm as we faced severe drought and rarely there was any rain. We prepared ourselves with lot of pulses,seeds and millets but we lost all the crop as hardly there was any rain. The temperatures which got recorded were also very high. Only millets (Sajjalu/Bajra and korralu) we could harvest a little around 20-25 kg. Sajjalu we harvested little late as we did not know when to harvest and also many birds had eaten the millets also. We tried to scare the birds by whistling once in a while but the birds won in eating the millets and I thought may the universe bless us for feeding so many birds.

Sajjalu/Bajra served us very well. We made the soft sajje idli and everyone in our family enjoyed the millet idli. My immediate family used the millets for almost for an year. Its great to see our transition from being a majority rice consumer to millets slowly in multiple dishes.

Though it was a drought year we had a great income from drumsticks. We sold mostly directly to our consumers directly and we earned 5000 from drumsticks alone this year. Learnt that droughts make a great climate for drumstick growth.

After noticing this year I really understood the difference between natural monsoon and artificial irrigation. Artificial irrigation can never match the monsoon. Also understood why many poor farmers depend on the monsoon so much. A poor farmer doesn’t have money to dig a borewell, buy a motor etc.. and that’s why most of the time he depends on the natural monsoon. When monsoon fails the farmer looses all his money invested in seeds, ploughing and labour. Also bless the farmers who don't dig borewells but only grow with rains. They are doing a favour by not using the ground reserves, but many of the modern society would tag these farmers as backward :(. Also most of the pulses and kind of beans are all grown at the end of the monsoon and then stored for use in summer, as summer many farmers are unable to grow.

The hot weather, failure of monsoon and lowering of water level in the borewell made me to think that every drop of rain needs to be stored. Also me and husband had noticed that when we compared growth of trees from our Bangalore home to the farm the growth of our trees was very slow in our farm.

Given the little knowledge we had and time constraints with both of us working we felt  its better to consult a permaculture specialist and take their help to recharge our borewells and also stunted growth of our trees. We contacted Ingala, and asked them to help. Luckily we met them in another event in a few days (To me it looks like a universe’s sign to engage with them) and we decided to take it further with them. They visited our farm for survey and they provided analysis of our land and agreed to our observations of stunted growth and also water issues. We had water logging at multiple places as our farm was below the height of the road.

They asked us to do a contour survey and based on the contour survey they dug close to 3 lakes/ponds identifying where they need to be placed based on the contour survey. We hired one for rain water recharge and got the rain water re-charge done for 3 borewells. Overflow from the lakes/ponds were connected to the borewells for rain water recharging. They used different mechanisms for each of the lakes. I named all the ponds/lakes to avoid confusion in describing them.

Sundari, Bhuvanam, Taral, Pravaah & Amrutham. Sundari and Amrutham lakes were existing from before itself.  The below is the link for one of our ponds.

solving water logging: pond with clay lining at Aranya zbnf farm @younggardener5265

Also we got good rains in our farm this year and the good rains also tested the ponds dug. We could identify one leakage in a pond and also some water logging which was still there. Based on this water logging , we are planning to have banana/papapa plantation at this place so that we could use this water logging efficiently .

our pond pics:

                                           

Rain water harvest pics:

I had left water lily tubers in Sundari and 4 colours of water lilies started to flower and they are a beauty to behold. I love water lilies and I dropped few water lilies tubers in bhuvanam so that we get a great view from the container too.. The water lily tubers were propagated from water lily leaves from what I observed in the pond Sundari. Lillies which produce tubers from leaves are called as viviparous  lilies. I have heard about them before , but here I saw something from my own observation. Observation is a skill.

Below is a youtube link for the same.

propagating water lillies through leaves.

Also understood that that its always better the put the water lilies in pots and then put into the water so we can easily shift the water lilies if water drys out in the pond or prune when there is too much growth.

We had to let two of our cows leave us this year as there was too less of space for them to do free grazing.

We enjoyed our sitaphal.drumsticks,millets,Guava,raw banana and even lemons , even though what quantities we got from them were very less. We started to add more variety to our produce with these.

For addressing our stunted growth and working with the deficiencies of our soil we started to engage further with Ingala to improve our productivity also and move to address the other challenges.

 Our expenditure:

One time expenditure:

Rain water recharge (for 3 borewells) : 2.3 lakhs

Our ponds and lakes :  1.5 lakhs ( Design + actual work)

Ingala Charges for one time  visit charges : 40, 000 

 

Recurring expenditure:

Labour salary :  2 lakhs

Seeds + tilling : 20,000 /-

Our travel expenditure : 50,000/-

 

Our income :

Sale of two cows : 47,000/-

Drumsticks : 5000 /-

Millets, Veggies, Mehendi leaves, Lemons, Jeevamrutham sale : Around 10,000

Gratitude: 

Thankyou to Balaji (my dearest hubby) for having so much patience and dealing with all the ground work.

Thankyou to Ingala for helping us on our dream farm and educating us on the way.

Thankyou to Subbaya gaaru for keeping an eye on our farm and helping us to buy all the commodities( Jaggery etc.. ) for Jeevamrutham at a better price.

Thankyou to the universe for helping us on our farming journey and blessing us with this beautiful farm land.

Thankyou to all the animal kingdom in our farm who come to eat our produce and adding natural beauty to our farm with their presence.

Thankyou to all the five elements in helping our trees/plants to grow.

Thankyou to all the trees,plants for giving your produce to us.

Thankyou to mother nature for the rains this year and relieving us from the drought of last year.

Thankyou to all my customers who buy our produce and encourage us.