At Annapurna, we began our new year starting with the paddy harvest. As the sequence of sowing paddy in multiple seedbeds, we have paddy starting to ripen from late December to early March.This year weather favored us with light rather than no showers close to this harvest. We hand-harvested early sown Bhavani (test field) and…
Early sown varieties, Co43 and Bhavani (seasonality test) are past flowering and currently are in the ripening stage. As explained in Principles and Practices of Rice Production by S K De Datta,“At the time of anthesis (blooming or flowering), the panicle is erect in shape. The panicles flower begins at the top, middle and lower…
While we are still busy with the second round of the weeding through direct sown paddy fields, we have early sown paddy coming into the flowering stage. But paddy is not the only one coming into flowering but also Rosella and Corn. Rosella is being harvested for the processing jams and syrups while corn will…
Earlier this month we closed in transplanting paddy, a total of 20 acres with primary 3 varieties – Annapurna (farmer’s select), Poovan Samba (red) and CO43 (white; for parboiling) along with “Bhavani’ for seasonality test and a couple improved red varieties, long grain basmati for seed production. After field preparation and transplanting; weeding the paddy…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Rice cultivation and dairy work are the two most intensive activities at Annapurna Farm. Dairy is thriving throughout the year with a daily need of attention and work to be done. Paddy cultivation is happening for about 7-8 months per year in the field, and is very intensive with peak labor needs at planting and…
Digging of the pond, rice cultivation experiment and new biogas tank. Besides the normal farm operations, we have been engaged with various projects in the past week. Tarun is busy putting a periphery bund around a piece of forest land Annapurna acquired through a land exchange many years back. The land is a bit over…
Annapurna Farm Auroville 