nature's own farmers - termites

the word termites evokes creepy feelings to most city dwellers. during our recent visit to our parents place in chennai, we were busy cleaning clothes and furnitures that were attacked by termites (yeah its an old house) and spraying all kings of things toxic to ward them off from our house.

at pR, termites and earthworms and millions of other life forms are the original residents. we have moved in with them.

termites have taken fancy to our bathroom walls and are forever building and rebuilding on them. come rainy season we see millions of them working away bringing in mud and building mounds all over the place. it looks like the mud inside the walls are bubbling up. we have often wondered what they find in these walls as there is no wood work on the walls. apparently they come for any dead plant material, wood, leaf litter, dung or just soil. there must be plenty for them in the cob walls that does not meet our eye.

this rainy season we saw something new. suddenly one day the mounds had white spots on them. as though someone had sprinkled rice flour on them. in the couple of days they grew bigger and became mushrooms. so sweet smelling that i gave into the temptation and tasted a few. they were divine!

as it turns out, this species of mushrooms belong to a group of fungi commonly called Termite Mushrooms (Termitomyces). they are cultivated by termites inside their nests or mounds in underground fungus gardens! these mushrooms aids in the breakdown of cellulose and lignin into a more nutritious compost which serves as the termites actual food! however termites grow and harvest the fungus in its minute mycelium stage without letting it develop into the umbrella-shaped fruiting bodies that we call mushrooms. these mushrooms are normally not visible as they are inside the mounds unless the termites for some reasons could not control their growth (when it rains too much) when the mycelia will literally grow through the roof of their nest and burst onto the surface of the ground as mushrooms! amazing! and yes it was very wet couple of weeks ago when the NE monsoon was in full fury. apparently the are edible. they are dying out now and the termites will probably eat them.

planting trees - lots of them

this year we have planned to plant around 400 tree. refer item no. 5 in things are afoot.
we should get upto 350 trees based on our current count.
around 300 will be pongamia pinnata and the rest will be a mix of fruit trees (coconut, mango, sapota, guava, etc)

a lot of tree planting drives are carried out by a variety of organisations, typically on occasions like World Environment Day, etc.
most of them are utter rot.

tree planting is tough work and takes energy and care. you need people with the utmost dedication and devotion - who do not care about the photo ops and the newspaper publicity and the conscience laundering.

we planted around 50 trees in early june when we had a series of wet days. and after 3 months we have 47 survivors. we are proud of this survival rate.

so it all boils down to timing - timing of the rains.
we were readying the plant the remaining 300 trees sometime in september, just after a good spell of rain from the SW monsoon and then the NE monsoon will take over.
we had got an expert pit digger, arjunan, to dig the 300 odd pits. each pit is a cube of length 18 inches. gap between each tree is 25 feet.
his work requires an altogether separate post. filling up a a pit is such hard work, imagine digging it.

and as per his advice, we filled up 130 pits today with 1 cu ft of manure and shovelled in most of the dug out soil. at the next rain, we would plant the trees.
this filling up we did today afternoon under mild, pleasant weather.
at around 330 we were getting ready for our regular evening chores of watering, sickling, etc.
as we set out, the skies opened up for 15 mins. heavy showers.

so stopped all other work.
wheel-barrowed 25 saplings and started planting them.
by the time we were getting to the end, the skies opened up again. yes, again.
almost perfect synchronisation with the rain gods.
the newly planted trees get their first fresh dose of life-giving water directly from rain.

scintillating feeling. maybe this is what giving birth feels like.
targetting planting another 50 trees tomorrow.

the trip of scientists

when scientists come up with discoveries like "most significant breakthrough in agricultural science since the “green revolution”", it is quite amusing.

The achievement by scientists from the universities of Liverpool and Bristol and the John Innes Centre in Norwich would “revolutionise” wheat production leading to greater food security and lower prices, experts behind the research claimed.

lower prices?? spending too much time in smoky labs could be the reason.

The data, a version of which would be placed online so that farmers around the world could have immediate access to it, would help “accelerate the speed and accuracy of plant-breeding”...

how will farmers accessing the gene sequence help them?

all this research is aimed for...

...raising the prospects of bigger and faster disease-resistant crops to meet the looming global food shortage.

the food shortage is simply related to lesser people spending their efforts in growing food. there is no other way to solve the impending crisis, but for an increase in the number of farmers.

the ability to play god is an ego trip.
the ability to control nature is the hitlerian ego trip. and many scientists seem to have booked into this trip.

and here is a beautiful piece of 'scientist news' which made me smile...
Plants can summon insects to their aid to avoid being munched to death by caterpillars, scientists have found.

guess who came visiting

photo courtesy - DV

our local veteran - annamalai - says that it is his first ever sighting in this location.

sharing habitats

we had a serious problem with the rats and adopted a shock-n-awe approach.

but this new fellow is in an altogether different league.


scorpions, like rats, by virtue of sharing the same habitat as humans, run into serious conflict.
snakes on the other hand prefer to live in their own places.
others like lizards, frogs, ants, etc share our habitat, but are harmless and can be easily ignored.

back to this black lissome stinger. we sighted her at around 11 pm in the night of heavy rain. we immediately increased our potential energy and from that vantage, we observed her perambulate casually.
over 2 mins of frenzied parlays, it was decided to get 'rid' of her. and i chose a long plywood and did a steve waugh slog sweep over mid-wicket. i could not bring myself to stomp on her...

we found out that she is not an impulsive stinger and her first mode of attach is through her pincers (painful as it is) and has a 'no-first-use' policy with her stinger.
so we tread with a little less fear.

eat mangoes till you drop

this was the invitation floated by ananthu.
an offer too tempting to let pass by.
a glorious day of mango eating unfolded.
the location was leo farm in tiruvallur district in north tamilnadu.
the invitee was bharathi, the owner. a remarkable man.

spread over 150 acres, this farm is one of the few places where the beautiful cycle of nature plays out.

the visiting crew. karpagam, sumathi and ananthu.


with the remarkable bharati...


the tree and the fruit in close up.


eating, drinking, slurping...


tired from all the standing and eating, now sitting and eating...


let me get to explaining the cycle which i referred to earlier.
since bharati uses natural farming systems, there is obviously no usage of any form of chemicals.
and natural farming theory clearly does not label. so there are no 'weeds'.
and so the farm is full of wild growth.
(please do notice the beautiful rain clouds building up in the background.)


of course, this could overrun the place. so here is the control mechanism (aka the weeding crew).


a team of over 150 goats, cows, horses, donkeys graze the succulent grasses and shrubs. with no supervision.
here is the beauty, they are free to eat the mangoes too. no restrictions. bharati says evocatively, "we sell whatever remains after the animals have their fill."

and here comes the double beauty. as the animals graze, they drop dung and urine all around the trees. this encourages the explosion in the population of the insects, worms and a variety of micro-organisms. they converge onto the dung and convert it into nutrients back to the plants and trees.
in the meanwhile, the leaves shed by the trees forms a thick carpet under the canopy and as they decay, the earthworms come into play and voila, vermicompost generation in-situ.
this healthy soil makes healthy plants, which bear healthy fruit, which we eat till we drop.

and bonus shot as we invade the privacy of a couple of grasshoppers.


superb.

rainbow magic

as if the skies were not beautiful enough, last evening's most awesome rainbow blew us away.
end to end with nothing to blemish the image.
these moments wish us having a better than a point-and-shoot camera. (trust survey san gets this direct reference)










sky gazing is now certainly our main time-pass :-)

lillies in the pond

you have seen our pond in previous posts. we had used the water in the emergency using the treadle pump.

it is a catchement of approx 2 million litres capacity and a maximum depth of around 8 feet.
in peak rains (late oct to mid nov), it fills up and is a sight we eagerly await to feast upon.

to jazz up the surface, DV gets a few lillies for us to populate the pond.
along with plain beautification, the addition of a simple flower just amps up the bio-diversity.
and the leaf cover should ease evaporation loss.

planting was simple. ease out the mud/clay to form a small ditch (under water). place and cover the roots/bulb of the lily with the eased out mud.



and 3 weeks later, we are greeted by this sight in the morning.


and there were two...


and with the new windturbine in the background....

more magical skies

earlier fantastic skies are here and here.

rat-a-tata

the rat poison worked. it was a popular MNC brand.
am not that thankful to plug it here!!

even though it popularly known that rats are cautious eaters of new substances, 4 rats bit the dust.
all of them died indoors and hence were buried - thus thankfully avoiding secondary poisoning.

beautiful butterflies

it is the season. we are flooded by them.
all photos taken by karpagam.

rodent attack

rats are quite the common presence in our habitat.

as as human activity grows, they move into the human spaces.

not only are they attracted to the human-activity-led food wastes, they also partake of the harvest directly from the fields.

we have comfortably shared the pavilion space with care that we stay off each others routes and avoid contact. this philosophy has worked very well with the toads and frogs.

over the last 2 weeks, they have become really brazen.

the lamp shade has been chewed up, boundaries are becoming blurred and toe nibbling has increased, much to our chagrin.

so i immediately consulted ratbehavior.org (really, not kidding).

but nothing really to explain why they would choose our toes over the tons of vegetables that are growing in the fields (maybe there are predators outside).

so we took the 'necessary' step of extermination via rat poison. this was 2 nights ago.

and as the nibbling continued over last night, the most amazing sight greeted us when we awoke with a start in the middle of a nibble.

a flutter of wings and lo, behold - we spotted an owl (a baby one most likely). inside the pavilion.

and owl sighting itself is rare, and inside a house is rarer still.

inside the pavilion is not the best hunting ground - too many corners and easy, fast hiding spaces which a bird will find difficult to maneuver. cats will have much better success.

it was most likely a spotted owlet. so we spotted a spotted owlet.

owls love rats (as food, of course) and owl populations are facilitated as a measure towards rat control in open fields.

this is another superb lesson in how nature sets the predator-prey chain in action.

hope the poison does not kill off the owl also :-(

that will be a sad outcome of our unnatural attempt....

my earlier brush with rats also ended up in their misery and my attempted penitence.

magical skies

some breathtaking vistas from the last 2 days.

down to the wire - david orr

david orr has appeared here around 18 months ago in 'what is education for?'
turns out that he has written on another subject just as close to my heart, climate change.
this book is 'down to the wire - confronting climate collapse'.

he explains the book and many other related things in this 3 part interview on transitions culture.
part 1
part 2
part 3

tremendously enjoyable.

he refers to this book - the shock doctrine by naomi klein.
she takes on free-market capitalism heads on. my kind of reading.

celestial dance

being in rural india has some serious charms.
the low levels of pollution and the lack of artificial lighting in the nights, opens up the spectacular night sky.
one can never tire watching the splendour of the moon in its various shapes and positions or the magnificence of the early morning orange sun. and the rare solar rings.
and stars are a daily awe-inducing sight.
and i am not even an interested astronomer - just like to look up.

the tough part is to capture this beauty and bring it to this blog. unfortunately, the equipment does not allow this, yet.

but here is a try at what we saw last night on the western skyline - the celestial dance between venus and the crescent moon. just lovely.


as the moon rose, it released venus from the eclipse pose. here are some better photos.

rings around the sun - celestial spectacle

we witnessed a superb sight at around noon.
the skies had cleared from the overnight rains by around 11 noon and the sun appeared very shortly.
as we looked up, we saw this:


and we gaped and gaped through squinted eyes/wearing goggles at this:




this is supposed to be the 22 degree halo.
it has to be related to the 12 hours of drizzly rain.

and more rain blesses us

the short spurt from yesterday night, resumed intermediate to moderate activity from 200AM and still continues (as of 10AM on 1st may 2010).
here is the satellite picture from today morning. very amply clear on what is happening (check the coast of tamlnadu).

courtesy - regional meteorological center, chennai

it is such a blessed feeling to get lightly drenched in rain in the midst of a scorching summer.
we have taken advantage of this rain and done a fukuoka style of broadcast planting of finger millet (kezhvaragu in tamil and ragi in hindi).

more to follow.

the first rain

from 845pm to 910pm.
as we were about to retire into well deserved slumber, the sound hit us first.
we rushed down, the beautiful blackness was clearly approaching and the patter increasing in intensity.
and then it hit us.
welcome, wonderful and winsome wonderburst of water.

the best part of rain is always to see it approach from the horizon and living in bombay for so many years has allowed me this unlimited joy.
but tonight has to be the best ever.

this is also the first time i experience this feeling as a farmer, understanding the importance of this simple natural phenomenon in the lives of the villagers.

we are just planting a field with finger millet (kezhvaragu in tamil and ragi in hindi) and cow pea (karamani in tamil and chouli beans in hindi).
this is perfect timing for their growth and health.

this is text-book rain fed agriculture.
we are trying it this year.

modern agriculture - an insight

at pR, we are hoping to be become 'do nothing' farmers a la fukuoka.
'do nothing' is difficult to explain and define in a single post. pointing to 'natural way of farming' by fukuoka to those interested readers.

to understand this philosophy, one has to start with some perspective on current agriculture with some historical background.
here is a useful article - modern agriculture - which efficiently addresses the above.
recommended reading for all.

toads, tadpoles and assorted frogs

we have a large pond at pR. and a few other minor water bodies.
post rains, i am imagining that the amphibious creatures must have had a blast.
jan-feb would have been the massive hatching growing scene and we have had to share a significant portion of the bathroom space with them.

after the initial and partial squeamishness (remember the many times you spotted one in your city home), we allowed them into our lives (they had already allowed us into theirs).

as summer grows and the water bodies shrivel up, their populations are now stabilising.
while k and i were discussing their presence, she highlighted a significant point.

the toads, tadpoles and assorted frogs are the sole reason, why we do not (repeat DO NOT) have any mosquitoes at pR. (remember the All-Out mosquito repellent ad)

with a plethora of the aforementioned water bodies, it is but natural that mosquitoes too must have had a blast post rains.

this is the beautiful balance of nature.
the prey-predator cycle sets up and it is fascinating to see it unfurl.