Spending time in Mohadi

A week or so after the training at Chetana Vikas, I decided it was time we visited Mohadi again. We live around 250km from the village, so it's quite a trek to get there, but always worth it. This time, I had my friend Sue with me as she wanted to see what it's like in an Indian village (and also wanted to meet with the local wildlife!). My thanks are due to her again for all the great pictures (all copyright Susan loose).

We spent 5 days at the village, living with my brother in law and his wife in their small house on the outskirts of the village. My 85 year old mother-in-law was also staying with us, but we all managed to squeeze in (just about!). Apart from the loud festival music starting at 5am and finishing at 12pm, it was restful! It was so nice waking up with the sun and being greeted by the buffaloes and cows outside, heating our bath water on the wood fire and chatting with the local families and schoolchildren over chai before school began. Leela was in her element, dashing around in the dirt and following the cows and chickens.

 

My family in Mohadi. From left, Shakuntula, my mother-in-law, 

Lalita, my sister-in-law, Leela, and Prabhakar, my brother-in-law

We were very well looked after by all of the villagers. Each day we were invited for food at another person's home and the food was wonderful and much appreciated. Sue would often go for a morning walk to capture the beautiful sunrise colours. Here's one of my favorite shots.

 

Dogs at sunrise, Mohadi

We spent a whole day with the CNVF farmers. We started with a short workshop, where we talked about what they had learnt at Chetana Vikas. Prabhakar Kadam, our good friend and person driving the CNVF in Mohadi, described the methods to those farmers who could not attend. It was good to touch base after the training and see that it had been very useful for them.

 

Prabhakar talking about the training at Chetana Vikas

After a short discussion, we headed out to visit some farms. Despite the midday heat, we managed to cover quite a bit of ground. We had a rest under a Neem tree to talk again about the methods we are trying to adopt. We also checked the wells in the fields. It was a poor monsoon last year. Even in January the water was around 30 feet below ground level, far lower than it should have been. Prabhakar told us that every year they must blast the wells even deeper, removing more and more stone, just to get at more water. This is a worrying trend. 

 

Helloooooo... any water down there?.......

                                     

  Samantha with rubble from recent well blast

I asked why there were so few trees out on the field boundaries and the answer was clear. "Trees cast shadows, which lowers a farmer's productivity". We talked about the effects of removing trees on lowering water tables, which means more energy must be put into bringing up water, again eating into a farmer's budget. They agreed that they usually tend to look at short term impacts, such as shading, and don't know about or consider long term impacts. I intend to talk more about this in another workshop sometime soon to see if a compromise can be reached. What about planting trees that also give a yield on the boundaries ? Fruit? Timber? Something to explore....

Another highlight was being invited to Sarkinnhi, a nearby village. The deputy sarpanch (village head) of Mohadi, Mr Indal, took me to meet the Sarkinnhi villagers one afternoon to talk to them about our CNVF work in Mohadi. We were welcomed with flowers and then I asked questions about their village. At Sarkinnhi, there is a very active homeopathic doctor who has been improving the environmental health of the village for the last few years. Together with a committee, he has been encouraging villagers to install latrines in their homes, as well as educating people about personal hygiene. They have also been planting trees along the village streets and keeping it more clean and tidy. It was really inspiring. I then followed this by asking about their farming, and just like all local villages, people are suffering at the hands of chemical farming. This being a health conscious village, I asked about whether they have been suffering any ill effects due to the chemicals they use. Every farmer agreed that after spraying, they feel very unwell and their skin burns and itches. After a tour of the village, they all agreed that when possible, they too would like to join our project. So soon, we hope to have a Centre for Non-Violent Farming in Sarkinnhi too!

We left the village after five days of enjoyment and I miss it already. We'll be going back in the second week of March to deliver a two day workshop. On the first day, we will look at the basics of permaculture, followed by an introduction to zone 1 / kitchen gardening on the second day. At the moment, I'm buy writing a progress report and preparing the materials for teaching. It's all go.

And one more VERY exciting development has been unearthed this last week. I was emailed about the new Farmers' Handbook developed by Chris Evans and Jakob Jespersen in Nepal. This book will be perfect as an introduction to permaculture and sustainable agriculture here, so we're in the process of working out how to get it translated into Marathi. I will certainly be referring to it a LOT during my workshops!

Some scenes from our visit to Mohadi

Progress slow but moving!

Over the last few days, I've been trying to find more library books for the project. I made contact with Navdanya in Delhi. They sent a list of their publications, and once they clarify some questions, I'll be sending an order in to them. That will really give the library a kick start!

I've also been trying to contact Chetana Vikas to find out their training dates for the next 6 months. Things can work slowly here, which makes forward planning a bit tricky, but I aim to get some dates, at least from my side, ready in the next week or so. I'm going to deliver the following elements of their training myself:

• Introductory Ecology
• Introduction to Permaculture Design
• Introduction to Natural Farming (Fukuoka's method)

I hope that we'll learn the following at Chetana Vikas' farm:

• Self-reliant (sufficient) farming
• Kitchen gardening
• Irrigation
• Fruit tree grafting
• Nurseries and tree plantations
• Creating water bunds

When I visited the farmers in September, we talked a lot about the need for ensuring basic food is provided for before considering cash crops. When going on a tour of some farms, we crossed through the village and found evidence of 'kitchen gardening', or Zone 1 gardening in permaculture terms, around a few of the dwellings (I'll add photos later - they're on my husband's laptop at the moment!). Later that day, another farmer told me that he was inspired to try this out himself after last year's workshop (before I headed to the UK to have Leela, my little girl) and it's working really well. This idea is really starting to appeal to the farmers who can see a direct benefit to them that won't cost much and will be easy to set up and manage. I think it's a bit harder for them to believe in larger scale methods, such as no-dig cotton farming, so this is a good place to start.

In fact, last night I had an idea. There is an area of land just outside my brother-in-law's house in the village, that at the moment is not being used for anything. I might put it to the farmers that we work together on a training event to create a community food garden in this spot, that my brother's family can use and will give ideas for the others to re-create around their own homes. For this, I'll try to bring in the ladies of the village as it's likely that tending of such gardens would be something they would do.... more thought needed, but a big possibility.

So... we're moving slowly now. The mountain is still large on the horizon, but we're into the foothills!

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to the blog of the Centre for Non-Violent Farming, or CNVF as you may see it mentioned on this page. On this blog, I'll be posting news about our activities, as well as regular updates on what we're working on and towards.

So... a good place to start would be to tell you where we've been, where we are right now and where we'd like to be heading.

A few weeks ago, we visited a farm called Chetana Vikas, near a town called Wardha (famous, amongst other things, as somewhere Gandhi set up an ashram). My husband, daughter and I met a group of 10 farmers from Mohadi at Chetana Vikas. This was to be their first direct experience of being on an established organic farm. Of course, I've been singing resplendant praises of these methods, but until now the farmers had wanted proof that these marvellous stories could be true... and lo and behold! Here it was... (photos to follow!). It was great to see them relaxing as the possibilities were laid out before their eyes and gave them something tangible to work with. Here were a group of local farmers who hadn't used chemicals for many years, barely even ploughed their land, used no GM varieties and instead used local ones grown from seed they had collected... and their farm was absolutely flourishing. A group of us will be returning in due course for Chetana Vikas's training programme, as it will give us an insight into how we could do things in Mohadi. We'll keep you posted.

These last few days, I've been trying to get moving on buying in some books for the Centre's sustainable farming library, as the last time I visited the village it was highlighted as a priority. Today, I called Other India Press in Goa, to see if they print any organic farming books in Hindi or Marathi, and unfortunately they don't, so the search will continue... I'll be getting hold of someone at Navdanya, tomorrow hopefully, to see about ordering from their catalogue. If you haven't seen it, take a look here: http://www.navdanya.org/publications. Pretty good! Let's hope they accept foreign credit cards... If anyone knows of other publishers in India who might have organic farming publications, especially ones that have been translated into Hindi or Marathi, please do let me know! We're also happy to order in from over-seas if the publications are really good. Recommendations would be welcomed. We're especially seeking books about organic farming, permaculture, arid land farming (including soil management, water harvesting...) and tropical forestry relating to the Indian climate.

My other major responsibility is to find funding for the Centre. So far we've raised over £450 (including Gift Aid) through our Just Giving page: http://www.justgiving.com/cnvf/. A friend also told me the other day that she has also raised another £100 for us, which was a really nice surprise. My next task will be to find other funding bodies who may fund social projects in India. As we're not technically an NGO, it may be tricky, but I'll think of something...

Soon I'm hoping to get a newsletter up and running, so let me know if you would like to subscribe to that. It will be in electronic format, so can be emailed to you.

We're also trying to find out about a dam that may go ahead in the area near to Mohadi, which will dramatically alter the village's landscape and farming. More news when it comes...

And finally, we're hoping to get some teachers and volunteers out here soon to help deliver workshops, meet the farmers and help on the farms. We're hoping to run some permaculture training in the new year and may even have some teachers coming along, which would be fantastic. If there's anyone out there who's interested in getting involved, please get in touch.