Current Events on the Homestead

We've finally done it folks, we've reached current times on my blog. It took around 3 months and 50 posts to cover my journey away from the mainstream so far,here on steemit. I've been constantly amazed by the quality of people and their content here and so glad I chose to come here rather than any other social media site. Thank you guys for following along and providing so much support and inspiration. This post is about what's been happening on our homestead since February of this year. I returned to the hills after the year end holidays expecting to get a bunch of work done, but before we could get to it, there was some damage that happened in my time away that we needed to fix first.

At the moment nobody lives on the land full time as our workers go back to their village after the day's work. During the festival season when there was even less human presence on the land, the local cows had free access to graze on the grass and weeds that had sprung up post monsoon. Our neighbour's land is at a slightly higher elevation than ours. This meant that the local cows were able to simply jump over the fence that we had initially built. Unfortunately our terraces couldn't handle the weight of the cows and collapsed in several places.

The first thing we needed to do was raise the height of our fences to prevent any further intrusions by the cows. The workers start by salvaging tall sturdy wooden trunks which are then placed at intervals in front of the existing fence.

I needed to buy the chain-link material from town and transport it to our land. I visited a steel store in town and placed an order for the required fencing material. The chain-link is rather expensive at around 5000 Rupees for a 100 foot roll, which is about 75 US Dollars. As our land is relatively small at around an acre, we can cover the perimeter where the fence needs to be raised with around 6 rolls. I transported these in installments as I also wanted to transport tin sheets for future builds. I took 3 rolls and 20 8x3 feet tin sheets the first time around with a hired 4x4 pick-up truck.

Last week, the family drove down to visit and brought along a lot of useful stuff for the farm including a tent, a toolkit, a solar setup from a previous design project and two avocado trees they'd got from a local organic farmer in Chennai. We figured we could transport all this stuff in the pick-up truck along with more fencing material. So the pick-up truck stopped by my room in town where we loaded all the equipment and I rode shotgun with the avocado trees. After a quick offering at a local shrine by our driver, we were off to meet the family on our land.

We reach the uppermost access to our land in around an hour and unload all our equipment.

The chain-link is nailed to the wooden posts to finish raising the fence.

The cows are no longer able to traverse our land at the moment and hopefully the raised fence will keep them out. We also repaired our terraces using earth bags. It isn't as aesthetically pleasing as the rock reinforcement we did before, but is sturdier and should withstand the elements.

Meanwhile our pump's starting coil was broken and there was nobody in town who knew how to fix it. My dad came up with the genius idea of sending it to the city with a bus driver who passed it on to him. He later couriered me a replacement assembly and the local mechanics were able to fix the pump. We've been getting intermittent rain but still need the pump as a backup to water our trees at least twice a week as the sun can get intense when it isn't raining. Hopefully introducing swales will make us less reliant on the pump, but we need it for now.

Our trees have shown some growth in my time away. They could be doing better though. Some of our OG amaranth have survived and a few more have grown from fallen seeds. The peach tree near the amaranth is doing much better than another peach tree on the same bed. Just goes to show how companion planting is beneficial. We'll soon have to supplement all our trees with nitrogen fixing species close by.

We also planted our new avocado trees near the well so they could be watered by hand regularly and also benefit from the natural drip irrigation our well provides.

Another new development is that our neighbourhood dogs at Hike N' Heal have given birth to puppies. They're everywhere and make my walk to the farm a lot more fun as they're getting curious and have taken to following me on my commute.

As I'm writing this our workers have used 3 rolls to raise our fences. They're collecting wood for the next part of the fence and will shortly finish that work. I'm also planning on moving to the land and building a temporary camp home until we can begin construction on a wattle and daub mud building. It'll take a few weeks to orchestrate that move to the land. The summer holidays also start for schools soon and Kodaikanal becomes crowded with tourists. This March marks a year that I've been involved with our land and this seems a good time to move. As we'll be in the driest time of the year shortly, I figured we would focus on our infrastructure and start planting closer to the rains, and when I'm settled on the land. A lot of the intricacies of planting requires careful observation to truly understand and that;s something that's been lacking all this time.

You may have noticed that my homesteading posts are spaced further apart. Partly because of the limited internet access in the hills and also because now that we're all caught up I have to wait for actual progress before sharing the next post. I've also been getting more involved with more art in my free time and will be posting the results of those creative sessions in between homesteading posts. There will be a lot more happening when I'm living on the land and I'll provide more frequent updates depending on connectivity there.

I've also realized that in all this time we haven't settled on a name for our farm. A few considerations are Orenda, which is an Iroquois name for the magical energy present in all living beings. Turiya, which is the fourth state of consciousness beyond time and space. Both represent the interconnections between life which is perfect for a farm. Or should it be simpler like 'Stone Mountain' or it's Tamil translation Kal Malai. What do you guys think? Do you have any great farm names?

If you're new to my blog here's a recap of my permaculture and homesteading journey so far. We've got a lot of exciting stuff planned for the future too!

Starting our Permaculture Journey on a Homestead in the Hills