One acre farming in one year - 1 - starting with rice
Come June, it's going to be a year since Mani and I signed lease papers for one acre of land in the village of Irumpulicheri and started farming. I know we're taught to constantly be humble about ourselves but looking back, I'm so proud by how far Mani and I have come, given where we started from and everything we've had to survive this past year. We couldn't have done it ourselves and the 'Mani and I' in farming has extended to Mani's mum Kanchana, aunt Tamilarasi, sister Mythili, brother-in-law Dhanasekhar and nephews Deva and Monesh, who helped us through the year.
So here's what we did,
June to January - a quarter acre of rice
We started our year by sowing traditional rice seeds of the Kattuyanam variety in one quarter of the land. Kattuyanam rice, unlike the favoured 'improved' White Ponni grown by farmers which are abundantly bought from shops, does not need its fields flooded every single day. It takes a whole lot of water (think of ten thousand bubble tops) to flood just one acre leave alone the three to five to ten acres most farmers own, to water the White Ponni rice they've planted.
We watered our rice about eight times in the total of six months it took for the rice to grow.
I'm still floored by how well the Kattuyanam rice grew with little to no help from our side. One of our goals while farming, was to see for ourselves if all the information we'd gathered and learned about regarding the effectiveness of traditional and natural farming methods would actually work on the land. We weren't disappointed. The only times we'd 'sprayed' anything on our land was the Amirta Jal we'd prepared ourselves and neem cake and Panchakavya which we'd bought.
(Amirtha Jal and Panchakavya are formulations prepared using cow dung and urine, which helps the soil bacterium flourish and in turn makes for a healthy soil. They are a stark difference from industrial fertilisers and pesticides commonly used which kill everything, earthworms included.)
The cost of preparing Amirta Jal was zero thanks to us being able to source the ingredients in the village itself, the bottles of Panchakavya cost us Rs.300 and the bag of powdered neem cake cost Rs.800. That's all. That was the total cost of whatever we put in the land from outside. Compare this to the costs industrial fertilisers and pesticides rake up for the average farmer and it becomes quite plain which is more cost effective.
One of the best things about the Kattuyanam rice crop was that it survived Cyclone Varda. When fields all about us had gotten completely damaged, there was our crop, still standing tall. Witnessing the field after the cyclone was something else. To see the rice still standing there, bolstered the conviction Mani and I had in the choice of farming we'd taken up. To see for ourselves that our choice of growing a rice crop that was not water intensive, did not wilt under pests and stood tall despite a cyclone, was nothing short of pure joy.
We harvested the rice by the end of January. From 2kg of seed we received 60kg of rice after the husks were removed. We celebrated our own version of Pongal by cooking the rice we'd grown.
It was delicious.
So here's what we did,
June to January - a quarter acre of rice
We started our year by sowing traditional rice seeds of the Kattuyanam variety in one quarter of the land. Kattuyanam rice, unlike the favoured 'improved' White Ponni grown by farmers which are abundantly bought from shops, does not need its fields flooded every single day. It takes a whole lot of water (think of ten thousand bubble tops) to flood just one acre leave alone the three to five to ten acres most farmers own, to water the White Ponni rice they've planted.
We watered our rice about eight times in the total of six months it took for the rice to grow.
I'm still floored by how well the Kattuyanam rice grew with little to no help from our side. One of our goals while farming, was to see for ourselves if all the information we'd gathered and learned about regarding the effectiveness of traditional and natural farming methods would actually work on the land. We weren't disappointed. The only times we'd 'sprayed' anything on our land was the Amirta Jal we'd prepared ourselves and neem cake and Panchakavya which we'd bought.
(Amirtha Jal and Panchakavya are formulations prepared using cow dung and urine, which helps the soil bacterium flourish and in turn makes for a healthy soil. They are a stark difference from industrial fertilisers and pesticides commonly used which kill everything, earthworms included.)
The cost of preparing Amirta Jal was zero thanks to us being able to source the ingredients in the village itself, the bottles of Panchakavya cost us Rs.300 and the bag of powdered neem cake cost Rs.800. That's all. That was the total cost of whatever we put in the land from outside. Compare this to the costs industrial fertilisers and pesticides rake up for the average farmer and it becomes quite plain which is more cost effective.
One of the best things about the Kattuyanam rice crop was that it survived Cyclone Varda. When fields all about us had gotten completely damaged, there was our crop, still standing tall. Witnessing the field after the cyclone was something else. To see the rice still standing there, bolstered the conviction Mani and I had in the choice of farming we'd taken up. To see for ourselves that our choice of growing a rice crop that was not water intensive, did not wilt under pests and stood tall despite a cyclone, was nothing short of pure joy.
We harvested the rice by the end of January. From 2kg of seed we received 60kg of rice after the husks were removed. We celebrated our own version of Pongal by cooking the rice we'd grown.
It was delicious.
2kg of Kattuyanam rice seed sowed on a quarter acre of land
Our one acre of leased land
Mani tilling the land to directly sow the Kattuyanam rice seeds in
Mani in the rapidly growing Kattuyanam rice patch
When you receive a hundred seeds in return for the one you planted -
observing one stalk of rice
The field is harvest ready
Harvesting the rice by hand - Mani, his mum and brother-in-law
The family
Harvested rice seeds
Mani's uncle Parthi winnowing the rice seeds
Celebrating our harvest by giving thanks to the Earth and our tools for a wonderful harvest
The first time yelling "Pongalo Pongal!" made sense :)
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