I will let the photo captions do all the explanation this month 🙂
Curry leaves fruits. Vanya loves themThis month, Kanmani and Mithra were the volunteers who helped us with our first batch of veggies in the new veggie garden We chopped & dropped sunhemp in our papaya beds. Green manure like sunhemp helps in adding carbon and nitogen to the soilThe lone Ramphal has fruited well for the firs ttime. Fingers crossed for a good harvestGuavas are available in both white & pink. In several sizes. Vanya loves helping us in the kitchen and is growing up a smart kid. The star ingredient of the newest product in the store : Star Gooseberry Brine Pickle! Tapiocas have been continuously providing us with some starchy nutrition First successful attempt at growing Coriander. The tiny flowers look so beautiful, don’t they?First successful atempt at growing RadishPaddy harvest was the highlight of the month! Our dinners are light, colourful and sumptuousWe did a Kadapa flooring for our Farm Shop!Or Organic Groceries store, as i like to call it oftenNellikai Thokku continued to fly off the shelves – 3 batches Noushy made. The shelf life has been a little low and we got a complaint of the taste not being very good. This is where Noushy weaves her magicAmaranth greens have grown really well this summerThandu Keerai and Ara Keerai are the Amaranths we cultivatedThe mesh on top of the veggie garden is not dense enough. The purpose of the mesh with binding wires (kattu kambi) was to keep peacocks out. But a few of them have managed to find a way insideThis is the first time we cultivated Seeraga Samba. The yield was not as good as expected. Because of damage by peacocks as well as other birds. The crop didn’t grow as dense as expected with the same seed rate that we have done for other varieties over the years. The summer clouds have been very pretty during sunrise and sunset! 🙂Our under utilized non-fenced rice fields have gotten dominated by Neer Mullu (hydrophilia auriculata). We need to figure out a way to control this thorny speciesFirst time mother!6 calves were born this calving season! We do a simple no cook Aval + Thenga Paal breakfasts once in a while Tiny Bitter Gourds are super tasty! I wonder why i didn’t have this veggies when i was young. Anthocyanin rich Red Amaranth leaves are so beautiful. Far superior to the Food colouring additives. We had a simple Valagaapu for 3 women in the homeschooling groupWe have had so much abundance of ladies finger that after having for home and guests at the farm stay, we have sold in the local market as wellThere aren’t too many takers for long beans (kaaramani) locally. I wonder why. It is such a delicious veggies. Nirmal and Bharati, my cousins from Mumbai, travelled all the way to the farm to participate in the rice harvest in last week of MarchKothamalli Samba yield was much higher than not just Seeraga Samba, but even compared to last couple of yearsEven though the effort needed to manually harvest paddy is much higher, it is worth it because the money goes to people directly. Combine harvesters ensure in income generation for banks and fossil fuel companies. Pedal operated paddy threshers popular in East India never picked up in South India. Because South India developed much sooner during the economic liberalization and skipped these simple labour saving devicesCluster Beans are a great leguminous crop that grows well in our soilWithout the women of Agasthiyarpuram, we couldn’t have achieved anything that we had set out to do. Need to keep expanding welfare activities for them. The Idli Rice Ambai-16 in our Organic Store makes amazing DosaisSpotted deers were commonly sighted in the pond on the way to the farmWe engaged a local drone photographer to capture the environs on a sunny morning The small bottles of Star Gooseberry Brine Pickle in the first batch got sold out so quickly that we made larger sizes in the second batchI was responsible for chasing peacocks every morning. I had the opportunity to catch beautiful sunrises every monthDo the holes in the keerai bother you?Our guests take much better photos of the surroundings than us during their walksThe water in the farm pond got spent during the irrigation of rie fieldsVanya is growing up fast! Can’t keep track of the milestones any moreOne of our guests Dheepan spend just one day but thoroughly enjoyed being goofy 🙂Vanya loves having hibiscus flowers raw. Do you?
