Sharpening tool

I use a 'Vettukathi' (in malayalam, probably chopper in English) for cutting the bush and coconut leaves . To start with handle was a big problem, after some use, it will come out and later I learnt that if the iron part comes out from the other end of the handle and fixed, then the handle won't come out that easily. I searched for such a tool and found it and then I was able to use it without any issues so far.

The second issue was the sharpness of the tool, if tool is not sharp, cutting is frustrating, it takes many more attempts to completely cut stems of bushes. Once when the tool became blunt, I took the tool to blacksmith and he sharpened it nicely, but after some, it was back to the same. My helper told me, he also take the tool to blacksmith and only he can sharpen it nicely.

During a visit to a home exhibition, I bought a file for sharpening tools. I just tried that and felt, the chopper has become sharp. Now I keep the tool with me so that I can sharpen it once in a while, instead of taking the tool to blacksmith and it is working beautifully. My helper also acknowledged this factor after using the chopper for cutting a tender coconut.

Updates - Hot weather,House construction,Cow pea cultivation etc...

Hot Weather

Weather is too hot now a days, it has reached 42 degree centigrade in Palakkad. Summer showers are still missing, last year we had very good showers on April 22nd and April 28th. While travelling to the farm, I can see some of the ponds has gone completely dry which I have never seen after the relocation. My well had 4.5 feet of water after deepening it, now it is completely dry. Water level in the 'Kokkarni' (pond) has also gone very low and motor runs just for 1 hour. I can see fishes getting suffocated, last time when I was watching one crawled to the side land portion and after some time again jumped to the water. At home I can see kingfisher going deep into the well looking for fish, since many of the water sources has gone dry.

House construction 

This is a small house to stay for us and for guests. Wanted to reduce the cost of construction and hence used old doors/windows, but still they are strong. I won't be plastering the walls and low cost tiles will be used for the flooring. It is taking more time, since labors comes for some time and they will go with other sites and keep going many projects in parallel.

Tamirind harvesting

There is one old tamirind tree which yields well. We harvest and process it removing the seeds and planning to sell it in the open market during festival time when the price is good.

Cowpea Cultivation

After the experimental paddy was cultivated, the field was having grass, so thought of growing cowpea without tilling. One reason was to make the field more fertile for the next season paddy cultivation. The grass was cut two weeks before.  Grass was pulled back and then seeds were sown and again mulched with grass. I made sure that this time, the thickness of mulch is uniform..so this time it established better.

 

White ants

White ants are active in the summer, eating whatever is available and converting to soil..

Mangoes

This time mango trees was not having much fruits..The particular variety of mango given below is called 'kudiyan manga' or 'nattu manga' or 'chandrakkaran'. If the fruit is ripe on the tree itself, the taste is unimaginable. When my 12 year old niece was asked why she wants to come to India from US for the vacation, the reason what she gave was to taste this particular mango which she had tasted two years back.

Successful Fukuoka style no-till farms - Some examples

Masanobu Fukuoka had practiced no-till farming for rice/wheat/barley for many years and he was getting excellent yield. His system was maintaining clover as cover crop along with grain for weed control and broadcasting grain seeds over the existing crop. This is the most simple and less effort method of grain farming, but people who tried can tell that it is not easy. The main problem will be in weed control and also finding the right cover crop, equivalent to clover is another task. 

I have seen some people trying no-till grain farming, but majority of them has failed.  A few exceptions are - Raju Titus of M.P, Shyam Shrestha of Sunrise farm, Nepal, Krishna of Solitude farm and another French blog

Here is the link of Raju Titus blog and photos of no-till rice/wheat can be seen here.

rishikheti.blogspot.com
https://picasaweb.google.com/104446847230945407735/NATURALWHEATGROWINGWITHTREES20082009?noredirect=1#

Raju Titus does not use any specific ground cover, but uses local grass itself as ground cover. People visited his farm says, the soil is very fertile and no-tilling for years has reduced weed pressure a lot. So my feeling is that this may not be easily adapted for a new comer, he has to work his own.

Another example is that of Shyam Shrestha of Sunrise farm, Nepal. I had talked to Shyam Shrestha last year and they still do no-till farming.

Their method can be seen in the following link, since it is detailed I am not describing it again.

http://ebookbrowse.com/3-no-till-pdf-d324006369

The complete book can be downloaded from http://permaculture.org.au/2010/01/06/farmers-handbook/

Here is how Krishna of Solitude farm does no-till farming. This is done by growing velvet beans as cover crop and then broadcasting rice and then cutting and mulching velvet beans above this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0xmEDq3NIs

Unfortunately yield obtained from these methods is not available.

Here is one French blog where no-till has been pictured, not able to contact this person.

http://marssfarm.centerblog.net/

Shallow tillage direct seeding

The challenge now I am facing with rice/sesame/cow pea cultivation is the lack of uniform germination. I felt germination is better with tillage and as part of this was reading the book 'The Natural Way of Farming' once again to see the initial experiments of Fukuoka San. He has done lots of experiments before coming to the success and here is a section from the
book.

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Shallow-tillage direct seeding: 22 pounds of each barley and rice seed may be sown together in the autumn and field raked. An alternative is to lightly till the field with a plow to a depth of 2 inches, then sow clover and barley seed and cover the the seed with rice straw. Or after shallow tilling, a planter may be used to plant seed individually or drill.Good

results can be had in water-leak paddy fields by using this method first, and then later switching to no-tillage cultivation. Success in natural farming depends on how well shallow, evenly sown seeds germinate.

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The book clearly says uniform germination is the key and suggest to use 22 pounds (9.9Kg) of rice seeds per quarter acre, i.e - 39.6Kgs per acre which is a good quantity of seeds which will make sure, uniform germination. In conventional method locally they suggest to use 33Kgs per acre, while in transplanting using SRI method, just 3Kgs is used per acre, since only single rice plant is put in every 1 feet distance. 

In addition to this, book suggests to go for shallow tillage initially and later switching to no-tillage.

Seed ball experiences

I tried making seed balls in this season for finger millet, rice, cow pea and sesame. I was reasonably successful in making seed balls for finger millet, rice and sesame. For all these seeds I was able to make them wet and mix with white ant hill soil and after 5-6 iterations seedballs were ready, it was reasonable from effort and output point of view. For cowpea, making them wet, they started soaking water and seeds become large and the outer cover peels off and even if seed balls are formed, some time seeds come out since the outer cover of the seed is very smooth. Hence I had to roll individual seeds which was time consuming.

I tried rice seedballs and germination was very bad. There might have some issue with watering also, seeds being in seedball need more water first to soak the seedball mud and then seed. For finger millet, sesame and cow pea also the germination was very bad. All these seeds I had broadcasted and cut and mulched the grass. Other than moisture, I am not sure what other factors affect this. For cowpea and rice, I had seen the seeds eaten by some insects and some time the seeds were damaged and they just disintegrates on pressing. Probably some moisture was there, but it was not enough for healthy germination, but enough to damage the seeds. One thing strongly felt is that, in summer when moisture is less,using seedball is not that useful, since when you want to cultivate with available moisture, seedballs take extra moisture to soak the soil covering. I could see that after watering the field completely by next day, the field is dry at the top, but underneath there is moisture which is enough for the seeds to germinate.

When I tried sesame, and none of them had germinated, even after watering. Typically sesame is cultivated after rice using available moisture. They till the land and put the sesame seeds and again till it and the seeds germinate with the available moisture. Also I think, when the seeds are in direct contact with moist soil, the chances of germination is much better.

In the next trial, I made an opening in the soil using a sharp tool and put sesame seeds in this line. And I could see lot of them germinated. In some cases, where there was mulch, germination was bad, it looks like being very small seed, they won't be able to lift the mulch and come up. From my experience so far, germination is better when seeds are put inside the moist soil.

Making opening in the soil was time consuming and hence now wanted to broadcast the seeds and then rake the soil so that seeds go into the moist soil.

In Masanobu Fukuoka's 'Natural Way of Farming' in the picture 'Toward a natural way of farming' he says to follow 'Direct-seeding with shallow tillage' before going for 'no-tillage direct-seeding'.

Rescue of snake

After digging the well, next week we found a snake in the water. The well was not covered and  no boundary wall so one snake found its way to the well. When I first saw it, it was not moving so put a small stone in the well, then could see it moving and not dead. Even though I am not an expert can identify cobra, viper, rat snake and a few others, but being at a distance of 33 feet, couldn't identify it. My worker Palani also couldn't identify it.

After couple of days, when I visited the farm, carried a rope and wanted to put a basket tied to it and put in the water, so that snake can escape from the well at night. As soon as we lowered the basket, it noticed it and came towards it and when we just moved it, it had its hood visible and tried to attack the basket. Now identification was easy, it was a cobra !!. Couple of times, it made the hissing sound and came again to attack the basket and later it dived into the water and was not seen for some time.

When we saw the next day, it had gone..it would be now roaming in the farm.

Digging an open well - updated on March 2014

I wanted to construct a small house in the farm for staying in the farm on weekends and also when more work is there and also for accomodating some guests. As part of this, 3 years back I started the work of an open well. In one summer it was dugged to a depth of 19 feet and there was no water and work was dropped. There was rocks at the bottom and it had to be blasted, so the work was stopped. Next year, got another team of labourers and brought one team for blasting the rocks. They bring the compressor in the tractor and make holes in the rock and put the explosives and then apply some eletric trigger and blasts the rock. The explosive is put at a depth of 2 feet and hence each blasting clears a depth of 2 feet.

Again after reaching a depth of 25 feet, there was no water ...and neighboring wells have water. They just dig another 2 feet in just one place to see if there is water, but there was no water, except that soil was little bit moist. In the 2nd year also the work was stopped.  I brought a person who uses some sticks and see the presence of water. In the well position, he didn't show any possibility of water and he suggested another area, but he also suggested since I have reached this depth, it is better to try another few feets.

This year, in the third attempt, we digged further with blasting rocks with explosives. And after reaching a depth of 30 feet, there was water !!!. I was so happy to see the water dripping from inside...We blasted twice again and now reached a depth of 33 feet and there is around 2 feet water inside the well. Hope there will be water till May and after that rain starts.

The farm has complete mulch every where and earth worm castings are also seen in lot of places. So I am assuming, there is lot of water going inside, but still planning to do a recharge using small pits made here and there so water can get recharged easily.

After couple of days, when we measured the depth of water, it was 4feet+, it is unbelievable and felt so happy.

 Here are some photos...

2013 rain was good and open well had recharged nicely. But 2014 summer is also going strong and open well at my house has gone dry and I could see nearby ponds also are going dry. But to my surprise well at the farm has still some water, at least 3-4 feets. I am planning to put more recharging pits around the well this time.

 2017-May

2016 rain was bad and estimated to be less by 40-50% and summer is very severe, most of the ponds dried, lot of coconut trees have dried. Well dried up in September, also it never recharged fully. I have to carefully tap all the rain water and put into sub soil. Planning to make trenches to redirect rain water and evaporation loss by sun and wind will be minimal and humas formation will be maximum at this condition, and humas holds lot of water, so trees will have more water available.