Journey in Natural Farming

After knowing through news paper, TV news, TV debates, Youtube videos, and many Social medias about chemicals getting into our food chain to the extent researchers finding 200 odd manmade chemicals being present in an umbilical chord of a new born baby, I bought a device that could be used to measure man made chemicals (nitrates) present in the vegetables and fruits. The device has a probe that can be inserted into any vegetable or fruit and the devices’s screen displays the Nitrate content. If the nitrate content is with in allowable limits it is safe to consume and if the Nitrate reading show in red, that means the vegetables or fruits are grown using excessive man made chemicals. Believe me the researchers data is correct, all veggies and most of the fruits that we have access to through vegetable and fruit shops are chemical ridden. 

Our body that has evolved over millions of years is not ready and is still learning to digest / eliminate man made chemicals in food that are less than a century old. Though agriculture is more than 2000 years old man started using man made chemicals as fertilisers and insecticide, herbicide etc only in the last century. So human body is yet to learn how to eliminate these toxins from the body. The toxins that remain in the body undigested reduces immunity of the body and also pave way for chronic diseases.

My experience with FMTV ( food matters tv) :

James the founder of FMTV was in sync with my thinking and hence have been subscribing FMTV for more than a decade now. By consciously avoiding solid food and sticking to juices prescribed in FMTV’s 2 weeks workshop on detoxification help’s detoxification and during the workshop from 2nd day onwards you start to feel the benefits of the workshop . The head ache or diarrhoea one gets while detoxing means detoxing exercise is working. These symptoms of detoxification subsides by 4th or 5th day of detoxification. Ones starts feeling breeze after this. 

It was not sufficient you only detox. You have to source chemical free food ingredients. Hence my journey in to farming to grow my own rice without any man made chemicals. Rice is the single most food that we consume in abundant quantity as idli, dosai and for daily lunch as boiled table rice etc..

I attended Shri Subhash Palekar’s 10 day work shop on (SPNF) natural farming in 2019 February at Trichy SRM campus. It was an eye opener. He said nature is abundant with the minerals required for the plants and humans and that we do not have to use any man made chemicals whatsoever either to grow or protect the plants. All that we need as per Shri Subhas Palekar was one Desi cow for its urine and cow dung, which are rich in microorganisms that act on the soil to provide the plants with the essential nutrients and minerals. Learnt to make Jeevamrutham, Ganajeevamrutham, Beejamrutham, மோர் கரைசல் etc to grow plants with out using man made chemicals. 

So first was to buy a Desi cow. I was surprised to see not a single soul in the village nor those in the family who have been in agriculture for ages knew how to identify a Desi cow from a Jersey cow or Jersey cross breed cows. It took almost 2 years for me to identify a pure Umbalacherry cow with calf. Lakshmi (2nd calfed mother) and Ahalya (calf) as named by my daughter Shalini came into our life in July’23. Not just us our extended family was thrilled to have the cow. Deputed Raja as care taker for Lakshmi and Ahalya. Lakshmi’s milk 3 litters in the morning and 2 liters in the evening was relished by all milk takers in the extended family. I came across a tamil புறநானூறு பாடல் that exemplifies Umbalacherry buttermilk. This exemplification is not without a reason the milk, butter and the butter milk all tasted out of the world. My mother stopped buying butter for daily use. Daily ghee usage was  met with the butter drawn out of the  curd made from umbellachery cow’s milk.            

Lakshmi with her calf Ahalya

I was more interested to make Jeevamrutham. It was made my mother’s responsibility to make the moong dal flour and supply the 100 gram moong dal flour, 100 gram jaggery along with 100 gram soil to Raja(my man Friday on Farming front)  every 15 days, so that Raja makes 20 liter Jeevamrutham mixing 1 liter of cow’s urine and 1 kg of cow dung to the above ingredients that my mother gives along with 20 liter water. This mixture is left to fermant for 48 hours, only stirring morning and evening in clockwise direction for a minute. 

As we stopped using man made chemicals (fertilisers), pesticides and herbicides from 2019 onwards, now our land is ready to be certified as an organic farm land. I have taken steps to register our land as organically certified. This will be handy when some organic produce sellers insist on certificates to buy organically produced farm products from our land.

My journey became relatively easy with the support of my brother Viswanathan who has been doing agriculture for more than 25 years now. Thanks to my wife Kala and daughter Shalini for their encouragement. 

September ‘23 Rakthashaali a traditional 2000 year old paddy was harvested from our farm land and this was our first venture to sell the paddy after value adding as rice and poha. There was tremendous support to the organically grown Rakthashaali rice. This rice is touted to be 2000 year old rice and is figuring in the Ayurvedic book Charaksamhitha as a rice with high nutritive value. Here is an article from Tamil news media about the rice Rakthashaali  We have now started growing the Tamil Nadu varieties like Athur kichilli samba, Vasanai seeraga samba etc..Literally we sold Rathasaali rice to retail customers all over India from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and West Bengal to Gujarat. 

With my brother Viswanathan at our Village Katalaicherry