Special Guest to the Farm - Parames Zurich

Parameswaran Zurich, a young natural farmer from Dindigul is in the farm since yesterday. He is the same person who had sent 40 varities of different seeds last week.  He is our first guest to the farm. Therefore I was anxious how we can receive him and make him comfortable.  He came early in the morning starting around 1 AM at Dindigul and reaching farm at around 9.30 AM to Nanguneri. Subbu received him at Nanguneri. Food at Parappadi and Stay at Valliyoor. That was the arrangement.

As soon as he reached the farm, he was exited. He drew quickly some diagrams on the sand and sent through FB Chat mode with me.  We discussed about overall placement of crops, rainwater discharge and canal position. The one message that was strongly coming from him was the "mudakku" or milching the soil.  The soil has to be covered.  He did demonstrate by covering some of the plant base with available grass and kolingi plants from neighbourhood.

Shape of Farm as drawn by Paramez.  The stones are main items. Raised arc is the raised mud road inside the farm from Gate to the wind pump.  in anticlockwise, the first stone is the wind mill, 2nd the water tank, 3rd the high tension electric tower, 4th the rainwater catchment tank and 5th the store room near the gate.  He is dividing the nearly 3.5 acres in to large chunks in squares

Simple Irrigation Plan as drawn by Paramez on the samd. Look at the minature details of a section of the farm.. 

The open channel system of irrigation was not approved by me. There is lack of water for 10 months and I cannot expose water on a canal, which he accepted. Well a lot of plants were planted during these two days by Subbu and his team. He had hired few people more as work was simultaneously going on. Around 200 banana saplings, 20 Sapota, 50 Jasmine, 35 Coconut trees besides miscellaneous trees like Mango, Rose were planted.

Inspired by Zurich, I drew the final shape of the farm through imagination (by including the recent developments that we did) from my residence(1800 Kms) away.  Here is the complete picture as it should look be looking now. In a few days, I will get the photos from Subbu to correlate my understanding and appreciate their work.

In Summary:

1. We have been spending more money this month purchasing more plants to take advantage of the rainy season. Wheather rain will contine or not is anybody's guess.
2. We  have over loaded the garden with vegetation which require water. The lonely windpump is the only source of water.  Current connection is one month away.  We have no money to buy a kerosene generator, but that is the option for emergency pumping.
3. The farm should be looking good and professional for anyone to see. I understand from Subbu that neighbours are still skeptical on what is going ON. They will realise only when we start selling few vegetables in 3 months from now. Till then keep Mum.

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