The Annapurna wall – First 100 meters

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As mentioned in earlier communications; Annapurna farm is invaded by wildlife like pigs, deer and peacocks and it gets more and more difficult to grow crops in the farm. As also reported in one of our communications we built a short prototype of this fence a year back to get a good idea if this design is what we need here.

The first mini prototype fence at the north east of Annapurna. October, 2021

Since this is going to the be by far the biggest project Annapurna farm has ever embarked upon we want to make small steps to be sure what we are going in for. The farm has a periphery of 8km! So after the first mini prototype to see the idea in real, this year we embarked on step 2 to learn how this project can best be executed and what the cost will be.
We secured funds through a generous donor to be able to build 100 m of the fence. Andre designed the pillars and casted them in our workshop. The pillars are the skeleton of the fence and need to be really good to be able to last for decades. We did realize that the work took a lot of the attention away from the farm, but the pillars which we created, although quite costly, were of a superior quality. Then we cleared the area to be fenced with a jcb and hired a contractor to install the fence. Here we did a lot of learning; Since the fence is heavy and quite different from what is normally done in Auroville, it took a lot of trials before the team had it right. The contractor used a lot of manual labor for lifting and installing. All this made the job go slow and became quite costly in the end.

Now after all this, we feel we need a third step to be able to make a proper cost estimate. We still have some materials and funds to build another section of approximately 40 m fence. Since we now know a bit better what this fence entails, we will try to improve the pillar making efficiency and will use some lifting devices to erect the fence. In short, to use minimum labor and where possible use equipment for heavy work. This work we will do after monsoon when our main crops are harvested, and soil dries up to make it possible to work properly on the site.
Once this third step is done we will get back to you with the outcomes and needs…
*note that the barbed wire still needs to be strung over the wall part like in the concept-pilot.

A section of 100 meter fence pilot at the west boundary of Annapurna, September 2022.

Early Rosella 392ab Plot | Oct 2022

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Rosella is grown at Annapurna as a rainfed crop from August (depending on the southwest summer monsoon) to harvest in late November. The whole fruits are plucked when they are tender, fleshy, and deep red. The calyx lobes (outer layer) are separated and used fresh to process into Jams and syrups, while seeds are collected for the next season’s plantation and also milled in with the dairy animal’s grain concentrate due to its high protein content.
This year we sowed Roselle late in September (irrigated for the germination) as there was no trace of a good summer monsoon. However, we already have some early harvest coming in from last year’s (August 2021) rosella plot. Later last season rosella harvest, the plot was rotated into fodder sorghum and leguminous Phaslous Tribola (pilli pisaru) for dairy under the irrigated condition where rosella germinated back from the residual seeds. while most of it was plowed in to prepare for the next crop, a few lines were maintained to harvest the fruits earlier than regular November.
Currently, this early harvest is being processed into rosella jams and syrup for flavored yogurt.

Alley Cropping System | Gliricidia plot:392BB [Jun – Oct 22]

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The natural diet of bovines largely comprises wild grass, tree leaves and weeds. Increased domestication, however, has motivated farmers to rely on grain-based diets, as it makes it easier to maintain large herds of cattle and harvest higher yields of produce, be it meat or milk. Grains, in comparison to grass, are easy to store, to purchase in bulk, as well as to produce. Second-grade-broken grains are often easily available (read: cheaper) for dairy.

Annapurna dairy currently relies on grains, i.e. millet-based concentrate as well as home-grown fodder and paddy straw. While fodder (greens) is much more nutritional and natural to cattle, the quantity needed for consumption is relatively higher. To grow such quantities, one would require advanced pastoral management (optimum grazing), water, land, as well as protection of the land from other wild vegetarians.

The often asked question to us is how one farm off 135 acres, the answer is to make a system that serves the need of sustaining an organic farm.

A closer look at gliricidia 323BB will help to understand this better as it aims to sustain the rotational fodder for the dairy along with irrigated food crops, such as green gram, late sesame and corn.

For years, Annapurna has been cultivating the most outlying pieces (15-20 acres) of the land under dryland gliricidia plantations to produce fodder and biomass. These gliricidia were originally planted as a dryland crop to biomass for composting-mulching, and nitrogen-fixing to the soil, create organic fodder for the dairy along with far-off land protection and erosion. Food crops used to be grown between the lines of gliricidia as well.

In the month of June 2022, with the help of increased rain harvesting capacity over the years, we prepared alleys (spacing) between gliricidia to cultivate fodder under irrigated conditions. This plot was prepared by shredding down gliricidia alleys to provide the biomass for the first rotation with fodder crop 一 Phaseolus Tribola and perennial fodder Sorghum.

This system was visualized by Tomas years ago as a mean to reduce yearly compost input (creating biomass | organic matter). In the coming season, we intend to observe if the plot will be able to sustain itself with the biomass created from the gliricidia and legume crop rotation. This plot will further rotate into food crops and eventually into a fruit plantations; banana.

The aim is to slowly move towards minimizing the reliance on millet grains to having the herd predominantly fodder (grass)-fed while extending the land under long-term cultivation. As of today we harvested about a ton of leguminous fodder – Phaseolus Tribola and test cut of the perennial fodder sorghum from 392bb.

Alley Cropping System*

Hedgerow intercropping, also referred to as Alley cropping system is a type of strip cropping or agroforestry practice, in which fast growing trees and shrubs are established on the arable lands and annual food or forage crops cultivated in the “alleys” between the hedgerows. The shrubs or trees are usually planted in rows of 2.0 m to 6.0 m apart, with crops cultivated between rows. The trees or shrubs managed as hedges are pruned periodically during cropping phases to prevent shading of companion crop and the pruning applied to the soil as green manure and / or mulch. This improves the organic matter status of the soil besides proving nutrients, especially nitrogen. This system also creates a more favorable microclimate for crops by shielding them from drying winds. Trees or shrubs and crops components are managed to be complimentary rather than competitive.

Paddy Field Notes | October 2022

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We started the paddy season this year on 28th August sowing the first seedbed. The season began with an all-season improved variety CO43 along with Bhavani to test its early seasonality. We started the field preparation in the dry month of September where unlike the last couple of years, there was no trace of summer showers.
As of today, we have finished transplanting varieties: CO43, Farmer’s select Annapurna, Test|Bhavani and Test|Uma (red) in 14.7 of 20 acres of paddy and the remaining fields are still being prepared to plant further with red rice variety – Poovan Samba.

We skipped sowing Poovan Samba (red rice) as a test direct sowing system last week as 2 large ponds are reduced to the minimum and we are left with 2 bore wells, a single rain harvesting reservoir at its half capacity. Which shifts our focus now on maintaining – mainly weeding what is transplanted yet slowly moving to prepare remaining fields as we observe light monsoon (still South-west) in the air.

Salad Bar and Green Manure for the paddy season 2022-23

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Irrigated salad bars/green manure are relatively easy depending on the monsoon each year. At Annapurna, we receive an ample monsoon (summer and winter) and sometimes, even a cyclone at times. As a result, rain water harvest ponds have more  capacity to sustain the rice, orchards, and fodder, because of which we sow early harvested paddy fields to raise an irrigated salad bar. Green manures such as Phaslous Tribola and Sesbania Speciosa, (dryland specials) establish robust overgrowing of the weeds under irrigated conditions. 

The CO43 paddy harvested early in January and the Annapurna paddy fields stretching up to 7.7 of the total 20 acres, raised with early green manure and irrigated since the good monsoon last season, serve as a grazing ground for the dairy during the dry season. Cows spend an hour grazing in a  rice plot and get daily rotated into another field. The idea is to irrigate the fields enough to establish the crop, graze the cattle swiftly, and allow green manure to bounce back up with the irregular summer showers to plow it back in for paddy preparation. The remaining paddy fields are grown and managed as the dryland salad bar for the dairy and green manure for the paddy. Productivity of these plots varies from year to year depending very much on the summer monsoon rains.

In an exact opposite scenario, we rely on the summer rain to germinate the green manure. In such instances,  we look at rain predictions and then sow the green manure. Some years it rains several centimeters high, which can replicate the same result as when we rely on the irrigated system. This year, however, the rains were short and scattered. 

This brings us the first heavy flush of weeds, predominantly the Trianthema decandra L, which is locally known as spinach and is edible for cattle in regulated quantities. Under the lush short canopies of this weed, we have our green manures germinated. It remains dormant without ample sun and moisture and waits for the weeds to wither out after its 45-day life cycle. This grown sea of this dominant weed also falls prey to caterpillars (moth species unidentified) and gets eaten away making way for the sunlight to reach the ground and the dormant green manure finally synthesizes back to life.

Ayudha Pooja | Annapurna, October 2022

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On the day of Ayudha Pooja (technically, celebrated it a day before the actual one) we had Manou visiting Annapurna to photograph some of the ladies who work at the farm.
Manou has been travelling for the last 10 years taking images across India. His blog Wearabout is a document of people and clothing focusing on the use of hand-made textiles interwoven with narratives of people in a regionally and socially diverse society.

Photo IDs
Slide 1: Sangeetha with her mother Sangini (in bright pink-blue sari). Sangini has been working with us since 1992 and Sangeeta soon after. Sangini has been involved in various farming activities since the beginning and has seen many season at Annapurna. Sangeetha started off with herding and milking cows; now she manages the day-to-day activities of dairy-fruit processing.
Slide 2: Malathi, regular at Annapurna since 2018 and before the on-off season as a casual worker. Her day involves making database entries, supervising granary and day-to-day farm activities.
Slide 3: Laxmi, a casual worker for the paddy season.
Slide 4: From left to right, Shivgami, Santhi from Sedrapet, Soundri, and Anjali.
Slide 5: Ambika, regular since the mid-90s. In paddy season she manages the transplanting team; off-season her role varies from dairy – processing to granary support.
Slide 6: Santhi from Sedrapet. She used to be one of our milkers for the dairy until she stepped down due to health issues. Now she comes to the farm as a casual worker; actively during the paddy season.

Upper pond

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As mentioned before in these blogs, summertime is the best time for the farm to get projects done to expand and improve Annapurna’s capacity.

In the last several weeks we have picked up the unfinished work of a project which was started in 2018 when we got liberal funding to expand our rainwater harvest capacity. In that year we doubled the water capacity of the irrigation ponds to approximately 50,000m3 and with this we could expand the rice growing area to around 20 acres and started to grow bananas on a more serious scale. We also could start to grow more fodder for the dairy. All this while tapping very little into the groundwater.

Digging such a big hole gave us a lot of soil to dispose of. We realized that the soil was a wonderful material to build a hill which could contain an elevated pond. What we did not realize was that this was not just a little extra work but quite a big job to get done. It also needed a serious budget to be able to do all this work but again there was a donor who wanted to help manifest this project and we are very thankful for this.

First, it needed lots of work to prepare the site, then find a reliable pond-liner dealer, purchase and install the material and finally protect the pond from the wildlife which will be attracted to the water body. About protection, you see the material will get punctured by the sharp hooves of deer and pigs, and the animals will probably drown since the wet liner is very slippery and animals might not be able to scale the sloping sides and come out of the basin.

Since it took us several years after creating the hill and getting to the job of lining the elevated pond, the site had become a virtual jungle. It was a lot of work to clear all the vegetation by hand since it was not possible to get a JCB into the area. The sides were too steep to work and the machine would disturb the soil too much.

The good thing was that having gone through several monsoons, the hill soil had stabilized well and we had solid ground to work on. After clearing the site of the vegetation and removing all sharp objects like small limestone nuggets, roots/thorns and what not, we called in the company who had supplied the liner material. Two days before they came, we had a nice rain, but which gave us some extra work because the sides of the pond had been damaged.

I Pictures: Left – digging a trench around the pond. Right – after rain, the sides eroded again.

Then when they did come on a Saturday morning (from Bangalore) both the technician and helper had probably visited neighboring Sedarapet, which is part of Pondicherry, where the laws for alcohol use are more liberal. The helper could hardly stand on his legs and the technician was in a very apathetic mood.

We still managed to put down the geo textile to protect the liner material but when the real work started it did just didn’t feel right and we stopped the work for the moment. We were happy when the company was very responsive and apologized profusely and sent us another technician on the following Monday. The work to put down the liner was very challenging; the material is very heavy, and it was very hot down in the pond with temperatures between 45-50 degrees and the material itself too hot to touch with bare hands. It was a full day work with around 15 people holding and stretching the material.

Right now we are doing the finishing work of tucking the sides of the liner into the trench which was dug around the pond. We could only do this after filling the pond with water (approx. 1200m3) to let the liner settle according to the pond shape. Then we must finish the electric fence to protect it from wild animals, but also for people who might slip in and not easily get out of the water.

In the season to come we have to see how make best use of this elevated water body. It will surely be very helpful to create a buffer stock of water during the rice growing season because 3-phase electricity is very erratic and comes often outside working hours. We have to see how much pressure we get at the outlet which is quite far out in the fields. Depending on that we can use it in different ways on different crops.

The water body up there gives a wonderful feel and we are quite excited to explore the various possibilities, especially after such a long process.

In the bigger picture this storage basin makes the farm function more efficiently, and we are more resilient and less vulnerable to the erratic power supply of the grid. Having this upper pond, we can start dreaming of filling it using solar pumps. This will make the whole water scenario of Annapurna Farm very sustainable and independent of the grid.

Treo Zor

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At last we got it going.

Our blue and white Treo Zor electric three-wheeler is zipping around Auroville doing daily deliveries of dairy products, grains and bananas.

And it feels soo good. After years of struggling with old mopeds which we often overloaded to be able to get everything delivered in time, this is really wonderful!

All this because of a generous donor who was happy to support the farm in its endeavor to improve and increase Annapurna’s capacity.

To be an effective and productive farm there have to be many things into place, one thing not functioning well in the process chain can cripple the rest of the process very much. This was slowly happening with our mode of transport. Since we started to grow bananas the daily fresh deliveries became suddenly much more bulky and this needed a change. The little 3-wheeler is just doing that.

Like usual this was not as easy done as one would want it to be. There were complications like unreliable dealers, extended delivery times, registration hiccups and what not. We are still fighting with one dealer to get some advances returned,  but hope to get that solved as well.

I Pictures: Loading the three wheeler for delivery. On the way to Foodlink.

But then after persevering and the vehicle is delivering the goodies our satisfaction and gratitude is more profound and the farm seems suddenly to function more smoothly. Part of this feeling comes because of the noiseless moving of the EV; it all feels more magic..

Balaji, our delivery man, who has been struggling with the old mopeds on the road is a happy man as well 😊

Short updates where we are right now at the farm

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I Pictures: straw bales being made – straw bales in the rain.

We are in the process of harvesting the 20 acres of paddy and hope to finish in a few weeks. The paddy was planted with intervals and so the harvest is also happening in steps. In this way we can better manage the work. Most of the crop we harvest with a combine harvester, which saves a lot of labor. In the process we do lose some grain because machines are not as sensitive as ladies with their sickles. Still, economically we come out better and more importantly we can move much faster. This is essential to be able to bring in a green manure crop (leguminous rich plants), after the harvest, on part of the area so the cattle have some good fodder in the summer.

I Video: combine harvesting with music.
I Video: next step, baling the paddy straw.

Things are all connected and time is very essential because organic farming goes very much with seasonality. Moving fast is also important because we see that weather seems more erratic; and we get those bits of rain in these months, which is wonderful to give a little refreshing feel, but are quite a nuisance when you are in the middle of a paddy harvest. We try to go with the flow ..

Our new pup Enya got Parvo virus and we had to go for intensive treatment for a week or so, but with the help of Dr. Thiruselvam she got through the ordeal and the puppy is slowly recovering.

I Pictures: Enya puppy – Serena, Asta & Enya – Pongal ride – Madhuri checking the paddy harvest results.

We had our yearly Pongal celebration with a puja in January, shared a meal all together and of course there was the cart ride which brings joy ..

Madhuri, our usually-Mumbai-based volunteer, stayed with us for a few weeks to help analyze our paddy results; she is developing herself into a rice cultivation expert!

We will share more about this years paddy crop soon.

We are also busy with our infrastructure improvement projects.

I Pictures: Fence pillar mould development: Andre – Fence pillar mould development: Kanduvel & Sudha – Upper pond preparation for liner.

The pilot boundary fence is going on. We got a lorry load of cuddapah stones (a rough black lime stone) and Andre prepared a few sets of pillar molds. We will start producing the pillars with a small mason team this week. We aim to put up another 100 m in this next phase.

A few days back there came a technician from a company from Coimbatore to look at the upper pond (a relatively small pond embedded in the hill of soil which was created when digging the big pond a few years back). He explained what still needs to be prepared before the liner can be put in place. This week he will send us their quotation for the material and we will start to work on this as soon we are freed from the harvest work.

Then at last we are on the point of getting a small three wheeler electric vehicle (Ev) for transport of our products. With the bulky bananas, which will become more and more part of the daily deliveries, our old mopeds cannot handle it anymore. Our jeep which is over 20 years old will soon not be able to be used anymore because new laws are going to be implemented to ban old vehicles from the road.

We had ordered an Ev from a company in Chennai who after many months of false promises did not deliver; we had to switch to a more reliable company. We are still fighting with the company in Chennai to return the payment we made to them. It’s a difficult thing to deal with and feels not so nice. Even things which look simple on the face of it are often quite challenging to get executed…it’s our collective karma probably.. because I see a lot of people around us here struggling in similar ways and maybe we need to see the process as the thing to focus on and leave the rest to the big picture …😉