On the Farm

Peaceful and quiet. By the time you leave us we expect you will be rejuvenated. There is much to keep one occupied on the farm, when not exploring beyond. Birdwatching is one of them (See Birdlife).

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Relax - Read

If reading is one of your pastimes, we have a well-stocked library for all ages to choose from. You can relax in the garden or on one of the verandahs and while away the hours as you soak-up the sun. We have even arranged yoga classes on the farm for our guests.

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Local Farming

Why not learn about the local farming methods and local social customs as you watch the cows being hand milked.

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Farm News

On the Farm - June ’24

June was a holiday month for the men and preparing for the monsoon. There were two fabrication projects and both were ready in time for the rains.

Here the corner pillars/posts are being erected for the combined car/grain port. The pillars and cross bars were cut to the required length by Vijay who did all the measuring. Giriraj, a local fabricator, came on the 26^th and cross bars at both ends of the structure were welded in place. Tubs were placed over the tops of some of the pillars and plastic bags tied over the others before the first heavy rain. The basics have been done before the monsoon arrives. The first truss was fabricated on the 29^th on site by Giriraj.

The second project was to rain proof Dinesh’s kitchen extension. His tiled roof was taken off and replaced with corrugated metal sheets on a metal frame to make the area waterproof. The rafters and purlins of the tiled roof had sagged badly over the years.

Each day the men would slash at and remove thorny scrub which is a problem when bare footed women come to plant rice. A JCB was hired to dig up the stumps of axed thorny ber trees that were proliferating the borders of the fields. You can see that the farm drain on the right has been cleared and burnt. The overall aspect of the land is dry; the monsoon will change all that.

The men worked on in temperatures of over 40^o C, avoiding the 12.00-3.00pm hours. We put out water for birds and animals and somehow they managed to cope. One very colourful bird flew into the front verandah in a state of exhaustion and Dinesh happened to see it. He picked it up and cooled it off in the pond by the front door and gave it some water to drink. It quickly revived, posed for photographs and flew off into the bamboo. It turned out to be an Indian pitta and is the first we have noticed on the farm.

Another animal needing help was a black-faced langur with an injury to his mouth and hand. It liked to sit under the inverters and batteries next to the house and snarl at us from between them.

Tigger improved steadily throughout June. He had to be carried out supported with a towel under his tummy at the beginning of the month. By 23^rd June he insisted on walking all around the farm at sunset.

All the fields were ploughed and those being left fallow over the summer were broadcast with sunnhemp (Crotalaria juncea) as green manure and then tilled/planked over. On 1^st June a team of workers had filled eight trolley loads with gobar and scattered it on a field selected this year; a trolley load was dumped by the vegetable garden. These migrant workers are known as Mammas and are tribals from Madhya Pradesh who camp near here looking for such labouring work. They were paid Rs. 425 to load and unload one trolley.

One addition was born to the cows producing the gobar. Meera (daughter of our beloved Mun-Mun, who died aged 21 some years back) gave birth to a male calf on 16^th June at 4.30am. She did not expel her afterbirth, which is a potential emergency, and we called a retired vet willing to heed our call. All was well and the calf was named Arjun. But mysteriously an 18 month old male calf was found dead in the cowshed on the 24^th. He had not been malnourished but that is the usual reason that the young males die. Summer before the new monsoon grass grows is the most challenging time for them.

June 2024 was the month in which the national election results were declared and it was curiously quiet on 4^th June - the expected celebratory fireworks were not heard. Congress had done better than expected contrary to the exit polls predictions, and the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) did not get an absolute majority and had to rely on coalition partners to return to govern, giving the overconfident a jolt. There is now an opposition in the Lok Sabha to speak of and the all powerful youth voters are demanding jobs rather than money spent on beautification and such like. Kota’s M.P. Om Birla had to survive the first contested election for the Speaker’s post since 1952, but it was close. A stable and experienced team has been inducted at the top with some new faces on the fringes but consensus will take longer from now on and no one can be taken for granted. For the record BJP is by far the biggest bloc in the Lok Sabha, 2.4 times bigger than the Congress. The opposition is an unstable collection of disparate parties.

On the Farm - May ’24

May was unusually hot this year with only one short storm on 18^th May to bring the temperature down from the forties. We are at least 3^o - 4^o C cooler than town and our thermometer recorded 39^o C on the 22^nd under a shady pergola.

My Honda Brio’s AC could not cope and would blow hot air after 12:00 mid-day. That was dealt with by having a new compressor fitted as I was persuaded that 100,000 kms. was the limit for the original one. People who used to be very careful about security now leave their AC on while they go into a shop to be able to get into a cool car on their return.

Tigger, now aged 14, could also not cope with the heat and collapsed after a walk. He was clipped of his excess hair, demisted regularly, kept in front of an AC, fed by syringe with liquidised liver and gradually recovered his strength.

Farm activities continued despite the heat. The wheat bhoussa which had been dumped in front of the cowshed had to be filled into the rooms through the roof by removing the tiles first. Then the tiles were laid back again.

The wheat was bagged for the women cutters and taken home on their husband’s motorbikes. The yield was low this year which might have been due to the early heat in the spring.

Mewalal, our former cow man, who comes every morning to greet us was weeping one morning as his state pension had not been paid for two months. The authorities do this deliberately so people turn up and verify themselves. I wrote a letter for him to take to the Nagar Nigam (city council) help desk and they rang me from there to say he had turned up and was verified. He then wanted to arrange medical care for his daughter with Downe’s syndrome, who was said to have a painful lump in her midriff. He was entitled to a free scan but the queues are so long that after paying for his three-wheeler transport and arranging a literate helper three days running, it was cheaper to pay for a private scan. Luckily, her problem was not serious.

Gautam spotted these tiny yellow breasted chicks of purple sunbirds (Nectarinia asiatica) on the ground in front of his dwelling on the farm and brought them into their cooking verandah to give them shade and water. He would place them on the wall and within seconds the anxious mother would swoop down from a nearby tree and feed them. The chicks learnt to fly and disappeared the next day. The nest in which they had hatched was a small untidy pendulous pouch of leaves, grasses, etc. suspended about 8 feet above the ground from the tip of branch of a sheesham tree outside Gautam’s house and he had been following their lifecycle closely.

Orinthologist Dr. Salim Ali describes it thus: 'Nest - an oblong pouch of soft grasses, rubbish and cobwebs, draped with pieces of bark, woody refuse and caterpillars’ droppings, with projecting portico above the lateral entrance hole. Suspended from the tip of a branch of bush or creeper at moderate heights, often adjacent to an occupied bungalow.'

On the Farm - April ’24

April is our main wheat harvesting month. It is also a popular month for weddings and the elder son of one of our farmhands got married so his father took 10 days off and borrowed lots of money. All went well and Vijay, who is named after my husband (!), brought his wife Kareena to meet us. Vijay works making furniture in Kaithoon the next big township. Kareena has just joined the household and will probably do the domestic work while her mother-in-law is at work.

Mother-in-law used to be part of this gang of women who hand cut our crops but she now has a domestic job. These women would arrive by 7:00am and leave at 6:30pm. They cut 20 bighas of commercial wheat and tied it into bundles. When these were dry they piled them up from 3:00am to avoid the heat ready for threshing.

We also had some heritage wheat of two varieties, C306 and Bansi which we are trialling. Our men cut that and tied it into bundles.

On 12^th April the combine arrived and is seen here being put together. It has Crop Cruiser and Hurricane Harvester written on the side. Between 2:30pm and sunset at 7:00pm it had cut and threshed another 30 bighas of commercial wheat leaving the staw strewn around the fields.

A few days later the hay making machine arrived owned by the Sikh in the photo. It went around the fields very slowly cutting the stubble, picking up straw and chopping it up and blowing it into the trailer which was then exchanged for an empty one while another tractor took the full one to our milkman who was paying the costs. We got Rs. 5000 only for the lot but our excess straw was taken off as fodder and we did not have to burn it which is illegal but still common.

On 20^th the women piled up from 3:00am and threshed from 7:00pm until 3:00am on the 21^st. They finished on 23^rd night. There was a full moon and heavy fragrance of the madhumalti or honeysuckle seen in the first photo above the newly married couple. The gulmohar tree in the background with its bright red flowers was in full bloom. We managed to get through the entire harvest period with no rain.

However, 26^th April was dramatic as it started with a massive clap of thunder at 5:00am and one millimeter rain which helped to bring the temperature down from the high thirties and maybe encouraged more people to turn up to vote in the General Election as the average queueing time was 2 hours. I went at 6:50am and was 6^th in the ladies queue. From 7:00am they let 2 women in and then 2 men. Indside the voting room there was only one electronic voting machine with a matching paper trail in a separate machine. The results will be announced on 4^th June.

The last job after harvest is to bring the bhoussa in for storage. This is the chaff that is left in piles after the thresher has threshed the hand cut wheat and it is eaten by our cows. We employed a family from Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh who move up to Hadoti during harvest to make money labouring. A group of four men and two women of Bhil Thakurs started work at 8:00pm on 29^th April in a very hot wind. They worked all night and all the next day until 8:00pm by which time they had earned Rs. 12000 as each trolley load was Rs. 500 and each trolley load subsequently put into the bhoussa ghar through the roof cost another Rs. 500.

And to end with here is a photograph of a young spotted owlet found on the verandah. It was put back in the garage until it is strong enough to fly. They live amongst the tiles and beam of the garage roof.

On the Farm - March ’24

March’s blog will end with a culinary flavour as we experimented with a fire pit. More later.

There were 2 millimeters of rain on 3^rd March which refreshed the greenery but didn’t damage the mustard being harvested. Temperatures have been higher than usual so we cleaned the air conditioner and the desert cooler and changed the cooler pad. A squirrel’s nest was removed from the split AC external unit but we know from experience not to start the AC before checking for wildlife in residence.

The green fodder for the cows grew well and was supplemented with cotton cake and chickpea chaff. Considerable effort is required by two men each morning to cut the fodder. The peacocks seem to enjoy sharing it and nilgai have to be chased away. March is spring in North India and my sweet peas gave great pleasure until it got too hot for them. They are seen here with Chandini who was employed to weed the lawn. Delhi airport is a riot of colour in March with acres of bedding plants on the approach roads.

By 8^th March the mustard was ready to be threshed. Eight women had been cutting since 17^th February. They are paid Rs. 1450 per bigha of area to cut, pile and thresh. We had 30 bighas under mustard, and it will be sold in April. The yield looks not too good and the market prices are down, and certainly not as high as in 2021-2022 when there was a national panic over seed oil, and palm oil was not allowed to be imported.

And now for our culinary adventure inspired by a Japanese countryside cooking video. Here is a brick-lined fire pit prepared on the farm to Vijay’s specification. In our recipe no seed oil or water is used, only pure ghee. You can see the flowering mango tree in the background marking the spot where my mother-in-law was cremated.

Vijay went to a haat or market 23 kms. away to Choma village (which has the very old Charchouma Shiv Mandir) to buy a rounded terracotta cooking pot, black in colour, known as a handi. Pieces of tender goat meat, curd, ghee, green coriander, green chillies, onions, cumin seed, ginger, garlic and salt were thrown into the pot and the lid sealed with wheat dough. The fire was lit in the pit with twigs and small sticks and the pot placed in a hot pit with the lid weighted down. After cooking for an hour-and-a-half, the dish was enjoyed at a family lunch. Delicious.

On the Farm - February ’24

February was a lovely month. We had less than 1 mm rain and day time temperatures were in the early 20’s. Nilgai and pigs coming every night had to be chased off and the wheat was being watered from the tube wells.

At the beginning of February the potatoes were dug up and you can see them here drying on the verandah. We gave a few kgs. to each employee and stored the rest.

While buying sacks of fodder for the cows it was discovered that the brakes of the Gypsy did not work at all and the hand brake had to be employed to control the four-wheeler! We called the mechanic who found that the brake fluid had totally vanished, so he topped up the brake fluid and drove carefully back to his workshop in town only to find that by the time he got there the brakes had failed again. We insisted they change the entire braking system and they changed the brake cylinders in the front wheels rather than try to repair them (the old cylinders had seized completely). One wonders what the state of the brakes are on some of the older vehicles on the road with no annual MOT. Delhi bans any vehicle over 10 years old in an attempt to cut air pollution and so those older vehicles get sold in smaller towns often under the previous owner’s name as it’s hard to re-register them in another state. Newer cleaner cars pack the roads but the older ones don’t get scrapped. The car industry is shown to be booming but where is it all leading?

The women arrived on 17^th February and started cutting the mustard. By 23^rd they had reached the centre of the largest field and it smelt. The women discovered the remains of three pigs that had retreated into the thick mustard to die. We called a sweeper and he lifted two of them on a plastic sheet and tied the third and dragged it - all to be heaved over the boundary wall to a gully with dense thicket. Hopefully the local jackals which roam our wilds finished the job.

We employed a lot of people in February one way or another. Work went on on the gas warehouse at the end of the farm and by the end of the month the roof was on and most of the boundary walls built.

On the same day as the pigs incident the house motor/pump burnt out in our open well. We called Ashok on 23^rd and he came on the 24^th and hauled it up. He took it away to rewind and returned on the 25^th at 8:30am and refitted it. Later that day smoke was spotted coming out of a meter on the outside of the transformer. We called the linesman and he sent an electrician who braved the small bees which had taken up residence in the transfomer and removed a squirrel nest and parts of its owners which had also been using the meter box since the glass over the meter was broken. An earthing wire was found to be detached and finally by 14:00 the electrician left with a tip equivalent of 5 GBP.

On the 26^th it became apparent that the squirrel incident had caused the fridge cooling system to burn out. You can’t just ring al LG service engineer any more and we worked out how to ‘register a complaint’ on their Whatsapp national system. On the 27^th two uniformed engineers appeared on a motorbike, identified the problem and ordered the parts. On 28^th they came back and fitted them with nominal charges for parts and two call outs. Well done LG!

February had an extra day and on 29^th the weight of a bunch of bananas brought down a banana tree so we harvested the bananas, shared most of them out and put the rest to ripen in our display area inside the front door. We can’t use it as a cupboard any more as termites can appear through the walls at any point. We don’t want to use toxic chemicals and must learn to live with the problem by not leaving cellulose in termite infected areas.

And so February began with potatoes and ended with bananas.

On the Farm - January ’24

This January was memorable as the sun did not come through for the first six days and the first normal sunny day was 12^th. There was 6mm of rain on 9^th January which cleared the air but the men felt too cold to work and huddled around fires in the mornings. Max temperatures were 12^oC/13^oC.

We had log fires in the house using our own wood. Here is an action shot of Vijay splitting logs having cut them with his chainsaw.

It was good cool weather for picking up litter which I do from time to time. Our newly surfaced road encourages townies to come out and feed the monkeys which line up on the wall in the morning waiting. The good hearted souls scatter bananas, peas, biscuits etc. and then throw the wrappers and plastic bags in the ditch thoughtlessly.

The brilliance of the flowering mustard gradually faded but the plants grew and spread protecting the wild life sheltering in it. You can see pig trails where the wild boar made their own motorways.

The bersim/alfalfa for the cows grew well and here can be seen being watered by Laxman. It was fed to the milking cows and the calves as they could not go out to graze. The heritage wheat is beyond it where the peacocks are pecking.

Tigger, who had been regaining strength through December thanks to daily ration of goat liver each morning and chicken in the evening, barked on 9^th January for the first time since November. His back legs, although arthritic, are much stronger and he looked forward eagerly to his daily walk in the evenings.

22^nd January, 2024 was a day to remember and will be an annual holiday to remember the consecration of Ayodhya Temple and the return of Ram to Ayodhya after two thousand years of exile. Hindus around the world were celebrating and we gave laddus to the workers to participate in the general jollity.

On the Farm - December ’23

Heavy rain at the end of November and more at the beginning of December meant that we didn’t have to pre-irrigate the wheat fields and could sow once they had dried to the right degree of moisture - baa aagayi. This wintry photograph shows the wet soil and the ploughed-in remains of the rice stubble. We had nearly 4¹/₂ cms. Timely watering speeded up the sowing by nearly two weeks. We sowed our organic deshi wheat C360 and a second heirloom variety we had grown in the vegetable garden last winter to collect more seed, called bansi. The seed drill was emptied before the commercial wheat variety 4037 was filled. All wheat had been sown by December 13^th. Newly sown wheat always attracts wild pigs.

Another two year old calf was failing to thrive and had attracted a lot of ticks. The vet recommended a spray of toxic medicine but we decided to make up a spray using Vicks to drive the ticks away. There was some improvement but the cold and the damp got to her and she died in the night on 3^rd December.

We had stored the rice next to the house and covered it with black plastic "tarpaulins" against the rain. We called the women on 5^th December to winnow and load the trollies with the rice. In the background you can see the tall flowering mustard that had been sown first and the small green plants that had been sown that had been broadcast in the gaps at first watering. The rice sold for a good price of Rs. 3800 for one quintal (100 kgs.). No doubt something to do with a national election coming cup.

By 12^th December the night temperature was down to 12^oC and by 20^th December it was 10^oC. Construction work was going on at the far end of the farm on land belonging to Vijay’s sister Sadhana. She is the proprietor of Hadoti Gas, which is a LNG cylinder dealership and they have been ordered to move their warehouse to a more rural location since the original warehouse is now surrounded by residential and commercial property which has come up over the last forty years. There will be a warehouse on a very high plinth in case of flooding, a chaukidar’s house and high boundary walls enclosing the warehouse. Every day we can see the progress when walking the dogs.

There is construction in numerous places near us which adds to the human interference that has driven the sarus cranes away. On 9^th December we heard three sarus and saw them fly over. I doubt they will stay long with the Kaithoon by-pass being built through their traditional wetland breeding ground. The Garbage Transfer Station we had been objecting to has progressed seamlessly under the new BJP state government which was announced on 5^th December, so uniparty governance it seems.

The state government changed from Congress to BJP but no chief minister was declared until 11^th December. Modi appeared to be wanting to guide the leadership of Rajasthan and placate all castes with an eye on the national elections in the offing early next year. Negotiations shuttled between Delhi and Jaipur and finally the name of a complete unknown first time MLA was announced. Bhajanlal Sharma is a very new broom. He has two deputies so three major castes placated. The cabinet had not been announced by the end of December.

Tigger seen here with eco-friendly Christmas Tree complete with its own golden balls (fruit).

Tigger, our 14-year old German shepherd/fox terrier cross is now feeling very old and had been refusing to eat. He’d had a 20-day course of anti-biotics and was gradually recovering from that heavy medication. His arthritis was so bad he needed lifting up in the mornings before he could get going. Then I realised he could eat liver and so he was given fried goat liver every morning until he was strong enough to eat chicken in the evening. He was constipated and the vet suggested sorbiline made up to 20ml and given twice a day for five days and then de-worming. The laxative sorted him out and he started to eat with more enthusiasm. He walked around the farm on most evenings in December but very slowly and painfully and with his head low like an old wolf. By the end of the month he had still not barked since late November but was generally perkier.

When I took Tigger out at night for his final pee we would walk round the end of the house and hear a warning snort as a wild sow ran back into the mustard warning her three little piglets. As we played our annual new year’s scrabble game in front of a blazing log fire, we could see the sow suckling her young within 10 yards of the house!

Happy New Year!

On the Farm - November ’23

November is rice harvesting month and although full stubble burning is very rare, the last remnants of the straw known as pral is usually burnt and the air is noticeably smoky. And then the Diwali fireworks add to the smoke and in big cities such as Delhi, air pollution is very bad at this time and sadly Mumbai has caught up despite the sea breezes.

We started by watering the mustard. This has to be done carefully during the day under supervision as too much water will cause the young plants to die. At night the bare fields being prepared for wheat were flood irrigated.

On 3^rd November the lorries of ready made tarmac finally reached our section of the municipal road and the road was fully tarmaced. The previous tarmac had been stripped and dumped along the sides and has not been cleared.

On 5^th November the combine harvester arrived to harvest the 33 bighas of rice. Here you can see the rice grain being spewed out into the trolley. By the evening of the 6^th it left. The rice straw was left scattered over the fields and we sold it for fodder. Two trollies were loaded daily and taken off the farm by the buyer. Our pral from our hand cut rice was picked up by the women and trundled to the the cow shed by tractor-trolley.

12^th November was Diwali, and Govardhan Pooja is usually the next day, but for some reason there was a blank day in between this year and so it was on the 14^th. Here the three women are preparing the gobar images of Krishna and his brother Balram, and preparing the details.

The rice which had been combine harvested on the 6^th was spread out to dry on the 13^th and provided a feast for a flock of pigeons for days afterwards. The rest of the rice was hand cut so the women cut it and after drying in bundles it was piled up in heaps for threshing which began on the 17^th. After threshing, the pral was lifted in 7 trolley loads and dumped at the cowshed (photo above).

A 6 year old cow Anju, had been suffering from a dislocated front leg since soon after birth and she had never grown and developed as normal and her head looked out of proportion to her body. After so many years of pain and grief she decided to fade away quietly by settling in a mustard field. Here she is being tempted with gur to give her energy to walk back to the cowshed and shelter. That was the 17^th. She limped on until 28^th morning when she was found dead in the bara. She had been on her side for the previous three days refusing food and water. She slipped away quietly surrounded by her mother and younger siblings and it was just as well as 28^th turned into a wet day with 2.07 cms. of rain. Here she is leaving the farm for the first and last time on Rodu’s bicycle. Rodu asked for Rs. 1000 to take her away. That is three days wages for our men who wouldn’t do it themselves.

25^th November was election day to elect a new government in our state of Rajasthan, and you will hear the surprise result next month....

On the Farm - October ’23

For those of you who had an unusually wet October you will be pleased to hear that we had no rain at all. The temperature began to cool down and a minimum of 21^oC at night had become 17^oC by the end of the month.

The germination of the mustard had been patchy and in the Tonk region to the north farmers had to re-sow or plough the mustard in and plant wheat. We started to water our mustard from 21^st and scattered more seed in the bare patches. It will eventually catch up by harvest time in March.

We continued to water the rice at night and the mustard during the day as it can easily be over watered. The rice had its last watering by the middle of the month and the weight of the grain was starting to cause it to fall over. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between nilgai and pig damage and heavy seed heads being the cause.

Our termite battle continued. The room that had had the wooden door jamb and drawers stripped out of it was decorated while Vijay was away in Scotland gliding at the Deeside Gliding Club and spending time with our grandchildren on Glen Tanar Estate. The termites were found to have been coming up through the drawing room floor as well and nibbling the wooden structure of one of our comfortable armchairs. It is now on the south verandah for Doosra (one of our dogs).

As the monsoon was over we bought a trolley load of peeli mitti, which means yellow soil and is mixed with gobar (cow manure) to form the leepna which we spread on our paths. Shyam, wife of the man who looks after our cows, laid the new coating each evening after returning from work.

The women arrived on 31^st October to start hand cutting the rice. Here clean drinking water is brought straight from our well for the team. Clean drinking water is essential to life and as I write this the people of Gaza are deliberately being denied water, food, electricity, fuel and basic human necessities in full view of the world. India’s policy is to support Israel in its fight against terrorists and while the Global South is united in sharing its anger about the situation, India is unusually quiet and disengaged.

A main issue of concern in October was our oldest dog Tigger’s health. He had stopped eating and was getting weaker and weaker. The new competent private vet, as opposed to the free government vets we had consulted before, tested Tigger’s blood and heart including an ECG and was able to tell us that Tigger had tick fever, anaemia, low platelets, cataracts and arthritis, but the best set of teeth for a 14 year old he had seen in a long time. He was on antibiotics for over 20 days and with a diet of meat and cream he recovered and started being vocal again. When Vijay was in Scotland however, the other two dogs sensed an opportunity and attacked him by the throat. That put him back and made him vomit with anxiety. He had to be accompanied when outside and needed help getting up for a couple of days. The worry is what will happen when he can no longer get up and walk outside.

The Rajasthan state elections are coming up on November 25^th and the police are stopping and searching vehicles at check points looking for cash and alcohol used to bribe the voters. I was stopped and had to get out while my Honda Brio was searched. Now they recognise me and wave.

And as for Bardhi Bai, it seems that she will have to get her Aadhar card changed so that her father’s name appears on it and not her son’s. This may be possible in the local e-Mitra (electronic friend) or she may have to take time off and go to Kota’s Aadhar regional office. I will wait until after Diwali to tell her.

On the Farm - September ’23

September was a month of termites and mustard. We had waited until after the worst of the monsoon before tackling the termite problem. The first stage was to take out the wooden door jamb and replace it with a stone one. The plywood cupboards were removed and all wooden strips and pegs. The fitted desk and drawers were ripped out and the amazing amount of contents within stored in plastic tubs.

One method of tackling termites we had heard about was to capture the queen and then dispose of it. We decided to try it out. Three matkas were bought and holes made in them (using my best French sabatier knife I notice!). Sugna, our maid, comes from a family of potters and was confident that she could make small round holes in matkas and she did it. The matkas were then filled with cotton seed cake (which we feed to our cows) and buried. The theory is that the queen will take up residence within a month and the whole colony can be removed. We will see.

There had been very little rain in August but it did rain on 12 days in September and soaked the ground enough to sow the mustard. We bought Pioneer hybrid seed this year at Rs.800/kg. By the end of the month approximately 29 bighas had been sown with mustard. The submersible pumps were running continuously to water the rice.

Kota’s bid for fame is a massive Riverfront Project which had cost over Rs.1400 crores and which involved building 26 different styles of ghats and replicas of the Red Fort in Delhi amongst other buildings on both sides of the River Chambal downstream of the barrage for over three kilometers. There are legal questions hanging over its existence so the Chief Minister avoided coming to the grand opening and it was inaugurated in the rain on 12^th September. A week later 13 gates of the barrage had to be opened because of heavy rain further upstream and some of the facing stones were washed away as the project facade disappeared under water. Access to the riverside is said to cost Rs.200 a head and booking has to be online. A maximum of 5000 a day are allowed free registration - probably until after the elections on 25^th November.

Another long term project that began in September was the re-surfacing of our tarmac road and the concretisation of the section through Umedganj village, separating us from our usual access to the canal road.

On 19^th September a JCB started destroying the current surface and dumping it along the sides. It is not clear if this surface material will be removed.

The Riverfront Project and electoral freebies have to be financed and one major source of income for the state government is duty on petrol. The other is tax on alcohol. Around 14^th September the petrol pumps went on strike for three days over the high taxes on oil products in Rajasthan. Only when I went to Gujarat did I find that petrol costs Rs.96/litre there and in Harayan it is even cheaper. In Rajasthan it is Rs. 108/litre so trucks drive through Rajasthan without refuelling, not surprisingly, and the petroleum dealers are upset.

Tigger, the oldest of our three dogs was getting weaker and weaker and refused to eat. He did not have the energy to wag his tail or bark but walked a short distance around the farm. He is heading for his 14^th in October.

The Bardhi Bai saga continues with officialdom having found yet another area of confusion to exploit. She states the name of her father on forms when requested but lives with her son who is a different person. Forms never ask for son’s name, only father and husband’s. She is an elderly widow and of course she lives with her son! Each month we hope for a resolution and for her Provident Fund money to be paid to her and each time they come up with something else....

On the Farm - August ’23

The main story for August was the lack of rain. Less than 3 cms. fell in the entire month with rain being recorded on the farm on only seven different days. This was said to be the driest August since 1905. The worst drought had been in 1899 when only 15" or 33 cms. had fallen in the entire year with 7" or 15.4 cms. falling on 8^th July, 1899 and "thereafter not one drop of rain fell". The fields were too dry to sow and much of the grain that was harvested was whisked away on the new railway line. In 1905 there was another drought and the unemployed and needy were put to work on the Nagda-Mathura and Kotah-Baran railway routes. None of the regular droughts were ascribed to man made climatic change!

The agricultural potential of this area has been improved dramatically by the barrage across the River Chambal and a network of main canals and minors across a large ‘Command Area’. Good rainfall in the Chambal’s catchment area in Madhya Pradesh means that the canal could run in August so the farmers could irrigate their soya bean and the ground was recharged so rice farmers could continue to pump ground water day and night.

At the beginning of August we were experiencing a normal monsoon and the cows could enjoy grazing in this field of grass and urad grown for green manuring. You can see the young rice in the fields beyond.

A team of eleven women came for 8¹/₂ consecutive days and hand weeded the rice. They earned Rs. 250 a day for about 5¹/₂ hours work plus an hour for lunch which they brought with them. They would arrive before 10.00am having walked 1.5 km. from the village and would change from saris into clothes they could weed in.

On 7^th August an unknown kabari wallah named Lala appeared and we sold 35 kgs. of newspaper to him at Rs. 10/kg. He took most of our plastic but refused the glass bottles. This is a sorry state of affairs when glass cannot be recycled as it is much easier to make new glass. I don’t know what to do with our glass bottle collection. I wonder what happens to all the glass bottles thrown into bottle banks in Europe and the UK? The eleven women weeders line up very nicely for this photograph.

15^th August, Independence Day, was a normal working day for the women and Vijay put up the Indian flag on our roof as part of the national campaign ‘Har Ghar Tiranga’ or ‘On Every House the Tri-colour’. One woman rejoined the weeding team, having come back safely from a family pilgrimage to Shri Mata Vaishno Devi shrine 5,200’ up in Jammu and Kashmir. There is a direct train from Kota that takes 17 hours and then the last 13 kms. are covered on foot or on ponies or palanquins. A ropeway will be finished soon. The rich take helicopters. Kamala and ten family members, carrying a young girl between them, walked barefoot in the rain "A whole day and a whole night" as she remembered. Over nine million pilgrims visit Vaishno Devi a year.

An ongoing saga that is taking indefinite time is trying to get Bardhi Bai’s provident fund for her out of the system. Another document has been submitted and I am still pursuing for a successful outcome.

One outstanding matter that has been resolved is re-registering the Maruti Gypsy. When bought in 1991, there was a lifetime registration fee for the original owner. Since then we as second owners have to re-register it every five years as per current law. We had not realised that the last five-year period had expired in March 2022 which resulted in a monthly penalty since then of Rs. 500 per month plus a hefty fee to an agent to expedite re-registration. The Gypsy needed a new exhaust system, brakes and a hood, but the alternative was scrapping it which would have been painful for "Gypsy Madam".

And August ended on a ‘Blue Moon’ note with a second full moon happening in the same month which is a rare event. India also successfully landed Chandrayaan-3 on the unseen from Earth far side of the moon at the south pole, being the first country ever to do so. Within hours it had discovered that although the temperature at the surface is 50^oC, only 8.2 cms. underneath the surface the temperature is -10^oC. An unexpected finding and the first of many.

On the Farm - July ’23

July is the rice planting month and adequate rain is key. There had been nearly 15 cms. of rain in June which is unusual so the fields were too wet to plough and prepare for rice and green manure. Before floodiing a rice field you have to prepare the dolis by tractor and we couldn’t do this until the 7^th when we just got them done in time before heavy rain.

It rained on 17 different days in July but never very heavily and was well spread out giving a total of 18.6 cms. The birds love flooded fields after the dryness of summer and all sorts of goodies must appear at the surface to be eaten. The farm goes from dry brown to verdant green in two weeks and it is very humid and hot in the mid-thirties. Rain had been pouring through our ceiling but we identified the problem and dealt with it.

On 4^th and 5^th July some dhaincha was broadcast and some urad as green manure. Once the dolis or soil ridges were made for irrigation control the tractor could guddle and break up the fine clay and then the women’s rice planting team moved in. White ibis enjoying a flooded field.

The women bring the rice seedlings from the nursery on the next farm in bundles. They then throw them expertly to spread them out just where they need them in the flooded field.

White-necked storks join ibis in enjoying the flooded fields.

The women go on planting through heavy rain unless there is lightning when we insist they come into the veranda. They carry colourful plastic capes with them to keep them dry. This photo was taken towards the end of the rice planting on 23^rd July. The sun had come out and the eleven women looked like a row of colourful cranes! Do the water birds see them as fellow feeders?

A health problem for humans this month was conjunctivitis known as eye flu which has affected all our workers and their children and has been a problem in Jaipur and Delhi as well (likely in many other areas as well). Children are asked not to come to school but most adults seem to carry on regardless spreading it around as they do.

Despite seasonal infections some people seem to live to a great age. Laxman went to his Nana’s funeral in Jhalawar district. He claimed she was 120 and had ten children who were all living. She had new white hair but no new teeth and had had no illnesses before her final two months in bed spent at home cared for by family members.

My subzee seller claims her Nana is having breathing problems at 106. She claims she has regrown hair and teeth!

The moral would appear to be to keep away from doctors and allopathic medicine and hospitals!

On the Farm - June ’23

Our negotiations with the local cow hospice reached the point of being able to deliver some unwanted young males to the gaushala in town which houses about 150 head of cattle and they appear to be being looked after. It is illegal to sell cattle for slaughter and so moving them around attracts interest from the police. I furnished the driver of the vehicle with a letter for the gaushala and Vijay accompanied the van. It took the ring road rather than a more direct route and all precautions had to be taken to prevent being stopped for 'cow smuggling'.

An elderly cow was loaded first, but Henry, an up and coming bull said to be infertile, refused to go and was given a reprieve. Three young males were persuaded into the van and one known to us as Bojo was definitely surplus to requirements and so we managed to diminish the herd by four.

Having solved the problem of surplus animals we were then faced with a smaller but more virulent problem, that of termites. While trying to open a drawer it was found to be stuck tight with termite trails as were the two below it. On examination, termites had come through the floor and were chewing their way through everything in the fitted cupboards. Depressing to say the least. We had to empty every cupboard, drawer and book shelf and sort the ravaged from the clean and decide what to burn. Several pairs of leather shoes and my father’s leather cricket bag from the 1930’s went to be burned. It pays to have few possessions.

On 6^th June our new hali Dinesh and his second wife, Chandini, and 10-year old son Gautam from his first marriage were received at the gate. They had travelled by bus from Madhya Pradesh with a knapsack full of clothes and sack containing some cooking utensils and a few onions.

Dinesh had worked for us before when his son Gautam was much younger and was being looked after by Dinesh’s mother here. His first wife had left for another man with their young baby and he could not manage on his own here after his mother returned to her village. He went home to his parents’ so she could look after young Gautam and he became a daily labourer. Now with a second wife, and subsequent debts, he needed regular work to pay them off. He told a story of a bus ride in which he, Chandini and Gautam had survived an accident when the bus fell 30 feet into a ravine. He had to extricate Chandini from the wreckage where she was trapped and had sustained a fracture. She seems to have fully recovered now and is a loving stepmother. You can see that she is wearing her sari in a tribal style, unusual for here, with a big brooch fastening the pallu at the front.

We provided beds, lockable steel cupboard, bedding, a fan, a bicycle and a rat trap. Later we gave a desert cooler, and a gas cooker for wet days.

It did not rain in June until 24^th and herds of camel and sheep and their Raika tribal owners from Pali district were camping locally looking for fodder. This is an annual migration and they go back once the rains arrive. By the time they reach their home areas the grass has grown locally to provide fodder for their animals.

On 14^th June a Raika herdsman named Rama came into the farm saying he was searching for a camel. Then he proceeded to seek permission to bring his flock of sheep to our farm and they arrived at 1.00pm. He and one his four daughters called Pappu were herding about 300 recently shorn sheep. Pappu had come by bus from Pali to join her father to help herd. They were keen on being photographed and I sent some photos to Pappu’s sister in their dera or camp. They also came to water the sheep the following day despite our cow man complaining that the cows did not like eating vegetation that sheep had wee’d on. By the next day they had gone.

A cyclone called Biperjoy hit the Gujarat coast on the 16^th and flooded Pali district the nomadic Raika people’s home. We had strong winds being on the edge of the cyclone which brought down one neem tree on the border of a field, but no rain.

We built a tin shed for the cow man’s family so they could cook under it during the monsoon. Holes for the four posts were dug on 17^th June and the welder made several visits before coinciding with electricity supply. By the end of June the tin shed had been erected and a gutter had been attached, held with ingenious supporting brackets.

Rain arrived on the 24^th and by the end of June we had had 14.83 cms. Some bursts were so heavy it came through the house roof.

The main farming activity had been cutting the jhar or undergrowth around the edges of the fields and the men tended to burn sections which distressed us as it’s home to much wildlife.

Here to finish with is a photo of a large monitor lizard looking straight at the camera from behind the banana trees. This monitor lizard had lost a section of its tail. When chased away it ran over the flag stones with a loud thump-thump-thump.

On the Farm - May ’23

May brought a tale of two coaches. On 6^th May King Charles III was crowned in London and he rode away from Westminster Abbey in a splendid well maintained fairy tale coach that had been dreamed up in 1760.

Meanwhile here on the farm, May was the month in which our trusty bullock cart of yore, a variation of a 4000 year old design, finally collapsed from lack of maintenance. The termites eat the wood and every year parts need replacing and haven’t been for at least ten years. 25 year ago it took fodder to the Dushera Mela when young bulls were being sold and our son, aged 11, rode on it. It featured in a film on The Raj driven by someone obviously Punjabi and not Rajasthani but the BBC documentary editor didn’t seem to mind. Tourists and visitors have been for picnics on it, including my 89 year old father in 1999. I rode in it in 1980 when first visiting the farm in the days when two large bullocks were kept for the sole purpose of drawing it. It rattled and creaked when it was pulled slowly along the canal to the amusement of the villagers.

Coronation Day in London was wet and we have continued to have more showers than normal here which has kept the temperature down to the mid- to late- thirties rather than the mid-forties. The trees with their fresh green leaves have sparkled after the rain.

Although the wheat was harvested in April we sold most of it in May and kept it under black plastic sheeting known as tirpals until 16^th May when the first of three trolley loads grown by Ghansi Lal left for the mandi. We continued to sell our wheat from the farm since the first trolley load last month had set a market rate of Rs. 2420/100 kgs.

After the wheat was sold the bhousa had to be picked up from where it had been left from the threshing at multiple points and a family team of ten people came to do it. They worked in the hot sun for two days until they had loaded 14 trollies worth. They demanded chai twice a day and complained it was not sweet enough!

The fields were tilled for the first time after the harvest so the cows had to pick their way around the edges and nibble the hedges. They were allowed into the subjee patch after the last green tomato had been picked and the basil seeds collected. Interestingly, cows do not eat basil! You can see the jackfruit hanging on the tree. Each worker gets one jackfruit a week while ‘stocks last’.

We started to face up to how to deal with the surplus cattle. None of them were ‘worth anything’ in financial terms. We started by selling the most recent calf, born on 29^th April, and her mother for a rupee each. We seem to run a cow hospice. One very lame cow has a dislocated front leg and the barbaric treatment was done too late so the joint did not mend. She received her injury from a malevolent cow in early life. She looks six months old but is six years old. Her back legs have become so weak she needs help to get up quite often. She will be staying with us but negotiations were entered into for giving unwanted males to the town’s gaushala.

In May we were on the lookout for a new hali to replace Ranjeet. We were hoping for a non-smoker under 40 with a young family wanting to live separately from their parents and willing to do physical labour. The first man interested was over 50 and wheezy so we rejected him. The next man who turned up needing a job and having a wife and child seemed interested but did not come back the next day as promised and did not answer his phone. Our cow-man, Narayan, although only in his 40’s has ruined his lungs through smoking bidis and had a health scare on 24^th May when his sons appeared at 06.00 am asking us to take him to a hospital. Rs. 5,000 and a battery of tests later he was sent home with a few days worth of expensive injections and tablets. He now knows his heart and BP are fine but his lungs are in a bad way and if he continues to smoke the consequences will be very serious and we are not going to pay as it is self inflicted. With no occupant in the hali’s house the rats had a field day but seven were caught at once in this ingenious beehive shaped trap. By the end of the month we were still waiting for the right person to turn up.

We are still waiting for Bardhi Bai’s case for her provident fund with the former employer to be resolved. See each month back to November to follow the saga. I am told her case is ‘under process’ but how long can it take?

We used to be able to hear sarus cranes and their breeding grounds are near here but pressure for development has driven them away with the Kaithoon bye-pass being built through their reserve and a garbage transfer station being developed nearby. I was featured on ‘Wild News India’ channel speaking in Hindi in their defence. The garbage transfer station is being built behind the camera crew below the canal (photo). Sumit Juneja on the left and Anil Rodgers run the channel.

On the Farm - April ’23

April is the wheat harvesting month and we hope for dry weather but the unsettled conditions of March continued and we had dust storms on four evenings followed by rain. The benefit was that April was unusually cool and rather muggy with some spectacular sunsets and sunrises - see photo below.

Our son and grandchildren were here at the beginning of April but all left before the main wheat harvest. The bansi wheat was cut by hand and threshed by beating it with a stick as the quantity was so small.

The house wheat was hand cut by a team of women and threshed by machine mostly at night. Each year the team gets smaller and their demands in payment in kind as a share of the grain harvest for their work increases. They earn 100 kgs. per bigha which amounts to about ¹/₆ of the crop. They cut each stalk close to the ground and the field can be ploughed straight away once the wheat chaff has been removed from the fields - no burning of stubble.

Half of our farm wheat and increasingly the wheat in the surrounding farms is cut by combine. The stubble left behind is much longer and the straw is scattered about. A hay cutting machine was employed to drive slowly up and down the field cutting the stubble and gathering the straw. We get paid only Rs. 273 per bigha but we can plough and are not tempted to burn the stubble. Our cows enjoy the bhusa or chaff from the hand cut fields produced after threshing (photo above).

The mustard had been cut in March but the price was low. It showed no sign of regaining its last year’s price and we finally called the women to fill the trolley and to sell the mustard at the market on the 13^th. It sold for Rs. 52.8/kg. whereas last year it had been Rs. 67.5 and 10% more in weight. But this year we grew a different variety called Giriraj which might account for a difference in weight. We sold the mustard chaff to a contractor who collects it and we think it’s sold on to the DSCL factory near here for firing the boiler. It is cheaper for them than oil, we assume.

We had two female calves born in April. Nandi, pictured here, on the 11^th and Varsha (meaning rain) during the rain on the 29^th. We now have more than 20 heads of cattle and need to reduce the numbers.

We finally sacked our halli Ranjit after repeated warnings for drunkeness, and theft, but his children (and wife) stayed on in his house until their school exams were over. They all moved out on the 16^th and are renting a room nearby. Ranjit now has a job in a flour mill and we hope he can keep off the booze and make a fresh start.

The saga of Bardhi Bai goes on. Her corrected papers were submitted in mid-April and her case is ‘under process’.

Our neighbour, and relation, Lt. Gen. Ajai Singh, former governor of Assam passed away in Delhi aged 86 on the night of 17-18^th. But a few days before he died he sent a letter to the present governor of Rajasthan requesting that a proposed garbage transfer station being built in the wetlands next to the Umedganj canal and the bird sanctuary known as Pakshi Vihar be moved. That is our next campaign.

Dawn over the wheat harvest. In the distance the women are piling the harvested wheat in the cool hours of early morning in preparation for threshing in the evening.

On the Farm - March ’23

We had 10 days with some rain in March and rushed to thresh the mustard crop before the first shower. On 1^st March the thresher arrived and it took 2 days to finish. We sold for Rs. 5280 for 100 kgs. which was well below last year’s record price of Rs. 6751. The yield was well down too, which can be attributed to a warm winter, but the temperature remained below 40^oC but still above the ideal temperature for mustard. The word on the grapevine was that yields were down for most farmers in the area.

Once the mustard had been threshed the cows could be let out to graze in the mustard fields.

Another male calf was born on 19^th March to Poonam. He is called Chand or Moon.

The wheat was swelling well and it was a constant battle to scare wildlife away, especially the very destructive nilgai. This bansi wheat is a traditional variety which has come from a tribal seed farm in Maharashtra. We had ¹/₂ kg. to start with here and were growing it for seed. We now have 15¹/₂ kg. and will grow it next season for seed mainly and hopefully some for consumption. The taller or rogni wheat plants, shown in this photgraph, had to be pulled out by hand.

A team of men with a truck came to collect the dead timber on the farm including our beloved gul mohar tree from near the well. Vijay had cut it into convenient lengths. They also had a chainsaw to make further cuts.

7^th was Holi. The dancing, singing women have not been for the last three years but I asked them specially so they bypassed the other farms and came to us. It was already lunch time and Sugna emerged from the kitchen and joined in. The gangs of little boys we used to get no longer make the effort to walk out here.

All March we had been working towards a visit by our son, Anand, and his two boys Henry aged 7 and Arthur aged 5. It was our grandsons’ first visit to India and they had a wonderful variety of experiences. Our daughter, Anjali, returned from six months travelling in India and we could spend some time together before they all flew away together to the UK.

Here is an evening expedition to feed the cows with rotis and kitchen leftovers.

The Bardhi Bai saga has not progressed (see November 2022). But we haven’t given up and have been pushing. Hopefully there will be a resolution next month? It looked as if an OTP or one-time-password to her phone was going to be necessary, and since there is weak signal in her village her son left his phone with us for a day, but false alarm and it was all for nought. High tech systems far outpace our infrastructure.

On the Farm - February ’23

A strong animal theme this month. We had not a drop of rain but we started with coolish nights at 10^oC/11^oC but remarkably hot days. In fact it was the hottest February on record despite heavy snows in the Himalayas and the cold of January.

Suraj was born to Tiku on 2^nd February. Another male. He was very weak but with hot sun and mother’s milk he was soon standing and tottering. We are buying 50 kg. bags of churi which is chickpea skins, and khul which is cotton seed cake after the oil has been pressed out. The cows also get bersim, an alfalfa type fodder, and rice straws. The milk is thick and creamy but can only be sold for Rs.28/kg. to the 'doodh wallah', who comes to the gate every morning on his motorbike with his brass churries hanging off it. To get good milk and cream for the house we are paying dearly.

The young wheat was watered and as the month progressed the ears developed. The wild pigs chew on the green wheat and extract the goodness. They then spit out the residue. We find these little offerings as we walk around the farm.

Along with upto 14 wild pigs and 12 nilgai that have been spotted, we have a few hares. Sadly, Lucy and Doosra were caught with one. It was skinned and cooked for them and the dogs enjoyed hare stew for three nights. We hope it wasn’t the mother of this little leveret spotted living in the aubergine patch.

Along with young wheat we have been growing mustard. A team of eight women came to start cutting on 16^th February, once they had cut the mustard on the next door farm. The wild pigs that had been living in their mustard moved over to our farm. The air was thick with little flies at that time both in town and in the mustard fields. They sucked the juice out of rocket salad leaves that had been doing well and our experimental broccoli being tried for the first time. Other vegetables such as tomatoes and potatoes were unaffected.

After the women had cut the mustard it dried in the fields and then before threshing was piled up into small mounds called gullas.

Different people have different ways of making ends meet. One lady called Mamta Sharma calls on the farms around here every few months to ask for money and food. She is a widow and always has tragic stories to tell. She rents a room in Kota and must get a basic pension of Rs. 750 a month but it won’t even pay the rent. We gave her money and 3 kgs. of rice.

Ranjeet, who works for us, was caught selling our metal angle irons to a nearby trader for Rs.90/kg. which is the going rate. He had to return the angle irons and was given notice but since his three boys are having exams he can stay until his year is up in May. Although his earnings are paid direct into his wife’s bank account, he has access to the ATM card with which he can withdraw drink money.

The Bardhi Bai story has not progressed in a month. Her employers used an arbitrary date of birth for her in the absence of documentary proof but now she is claiming a different date of birth and the Provident Fund will not pay up. The employers have to sort it out and haven’t. "Just give us a few more days..." etc.

And a new development to worry about is that the Municipal Authorities are planning to bring small open trucks with rubbish from the town to a compressing plant next to the canal and close to a bird sanctuary. They claim that the rubbish will be then 'transferred' to the trenching ground/landfill on the other side of town. There has been no planning process or discussions with locals for this plan. The Opposition politicians say they oppose it and won’t allow it but is this political posturing? Watch this space....

And to finish with a photo of an international group from the Royal Asiatic Society travelling around Rajasthan in the footsteps of Col. James Todd who was Political Agent for the East India Company two hundred years ago and wrote 'Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan'.

On the Farm - January ’23

January is always the coldest month and we had some night temperatures of 5^oC and misty days when the sun barely came through at all.

We have had no rain since October and the main farm activity was watering the wheat and protecting it from the pigs and nilgai.

On 5^th January it was a misty morning but the sun came through at 1.30pm just in time for Charlotte to have her fifth calf, another male called Kohra meaning mist. He gradually warmed up in the sun and was soon strong enought to stand up and suckle. Charlotte was born in 2012 and is named after the young designer who designed our drawing room suite fabric based on our own plants.

The young wheat was short and tempting for wild life: there is so much about we are unaware of. One night while Vijay was standing quietly watching for wild pigs a jungle cat shot past him and ran along the verandah. You can see that the palm tree looks strange. Some of the fronds have been cut off to make jharoos and will soon grow back.

Makar Sankranti known as ‘kite flying day’ was on 14^th January as always. There was reasonable breeze and our four farm boys made the most of their evenings after school flying kites. Here Vijay is passing on tips to Pintu.

We knew that heavy rain was expected at the end of the month and covered up the piles of fodder in readiness. On 29^th we were told that a wounded nilgai had become trapped by the end of the farm and was struggling to get up. Our neighbours dog had already attacked its hind quarter - it was tied-up. We don’t know how it received its head wounds and suspect a fight between two males. That was at 9.00pm. At 10.30pm the rain started and continued all night. We had no power for 14 hours. By the morning the nilgai was dead. There was nothing to do but dig a hole and bury it where it had died. We had had 2.25 cms. and some areas of Rajasthan had large hail stones that were cleared away with a JCB.

Gangs of women with head loads of dry wood could be seen heading back to Umedganj village every day. We were lucky in having our own wood neatly cut into logs with the chain saw. The Gul Mohar was cut up and a local dealer will come and remove it. The wood is soft but the trunk was solid. Termites had destroyed its roots which is why it had blown over. A tragic loss.

On the Farm - December ’22

December was another toally dry month with pleasant sunny days and temperatures in the twenties.

The electricity supply meters had blown in the transformer thanks to a gecko that had managed to get into the MCB box located in the brick cabin some 10 metres away which had somehow caused a fire in the transformer on 30^th November, so it was theorised. We were without electricity for one night but a man from the company came within 24 hours to reconnect the supply bypassing the meters. A round of written reports, applications, visits to distant offices for signatures and sanctions began. The little gecko had lost its life and caused Rs. 12468 worth of expense and a lot of time and energy. Here the electrician is preparing the two new meters to go up on the poles now to be situated outside the transformer and by December 17^th all damage had been rectified.

The main headache at the beginning of December was selling the rice. So many trucks and trollies were trying to get into the mandi from other states including Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, that all surrounding roads were jammed. Trollies had to queue all day and were allowed in to the mandi from 11.00pm to 3.00am only. Trucks were allowed in after 3.00am to lift and remove the sacked goods from the mandi. We sent two trolley loads at 10.00pm on 1^st December. The first trolley sold at Rs. 34.10/kg. and our rice that had been flattened by nilgai and pigs went for Rs. 26.50/kg. - a significant loss. Rs. 36.31/kg. was our our top price for the next trolley, a record, but the yield was low.

While winnowing the rice and loading it into a trolley (See November photo) the sari of one of the women got caught in the machine and jammed it. Luckily it stopped and the electricity supply was disconnected immediately and she came to no harm physically but was in shock.

After the fields have been cleared of rice the watering can begin and birds are attracted from far and wide including white-necked storks. In the close up you can see that the stork has captured a small snake.

Once the field has dried out the right amount it can be sown with wheat. Urea and DAP were hard to come by. We got 16 bags of urea on Vijay's Aadhar card and ten on mine. The seed is mixed with DAP before sowing. Some fields had zinc added at this stage and some will get zinc just before the first watering next month as an experiment. The last field was sown on 21^st December.

It was a mild December but we cut logs on the 18^th and had our first log fire of the season on Christmas Eve. The painters painted the outside of the old part of the house, the white gate was painted and we decorated the inside of the house with paper streamers and stars for Christmas.

The early mornings were misty, particularly over the fields being watered. The date palm in this photo has had its fronds cut to make jharoos. They soon grow back. Raju, from a broom making community, has been coming for a number of years to collect the fronds gratis and in return gives us half-a-dozen jharoos. Sustainable rural living.

Crop protection went on every night with 16 nilgai gathering to see in the New Year at 11.45pm on 31^st December.

And now an update on Bardhi Bai's story (see November). By 10^th December she had a new passbook for her bank account, a PAN card and an Aadhar card all in the same correctly spelled version. The images were sent by WhatsApp to H.R. The pass book had not been stamped by the bank was an instant response from H.R. So on the 12^th I took her personally to the bank and oversaw the stamping and signing. The images were submitted again and on the 18^th we were told that her application would be processed "In the New Year...".

Happy New Year everyone, especially to those embroiled in bureaucratic procedures!

On the Farm - November ’22

We had no rain in November and generally clear sunny days with temperatures still in the 30’s. Last month’s heavy rain is thought to have affected the rice yield. The rice that had been combine harvested was spread out thinly to dry out for a week or more and then moved to near the house out of the fields so the fields could be cleared and ready for sowing wheat.

The rice straw called pral is spread around the fields in the course of combine harvesting. You can sell it for fodder and a large family team came for several days, gathered the pral and left with two trolley loads a day.

Here a trolley is trundling past the end of the house. The windows are in urgent need of restoration and repainting. The plinth is flaky and fungus ridden.

From 28^th November the painters arrived and transformed the appearance of the windows and cement sections. The mustard started to flower around the middle of the month and one painter wore a matching mustard yellow tee shirt unconsciously.

After the rice was dried, it was cleaned by machine and loaded straight into trollies by this team of women.

Some ten bighas of rice was hand cut which results in pral being in neat piles near the threshing site in the fields. These have to be loaded into a trolley and brought to the cow shed. There is no stubble left in the field to burn.

On 9^th November a male calf was born to Meera - the first birth in a year due to the death of the last two bulls and the immaturity of their replacement. This was the first calf he had fathered and is called Dhola meaning white. After five days we started drinking Meera’s milk. Dhola was given two teats and we had the other two. Dhola is sturdy but very shy. Meera is very aggressive unlike her mother Mun-Mun, who would let you come close and handle her calves.

The house wheat has been eaten by the nilgais and we may have to resow it. The subzee enclosure was finally ploughed on the 19^th and sowing of potato started on the 23^rd. We have planted a traditional variety of wheat called 'Gaavraan Bansi' which was sourced from a tribal seed fair in Madhya Pradesh. We are growing it for seed in this nilgai proof enclosed space which leaves less room for vegetables.

Once the crops have been removed from a field and the ground tilled, many birds come to forage for dropped grain. One evening a flock of parrots was enjoying this rice. Almost invisible on the ground, the sun caught their wings as they wheeled and soared before settling down again.

And to end with an insight into how hard it is coping with the corporate digital world as an illiterate widow. Bardhi Bai is a widow in her seventies who worked for a company with its H.Q. in Delhi that had the contract to run our nearby sewage treatment plant. She was on daily wages but qualified for contributions to a Provident Fund. After five years J.M. Enviro Technologies Pvt. Ltd. ended their contract and paid their workers their provident fund - except for Bardhi Bai!

Her name in English has been spelled various ways by data inputers and the spelling of her ID did not match the company’s records. She had been running pillar to post trying to get momey for over a year and in desperation appealed to me. Anjali, our daughter, happened to be staying in Delhi and went to the H.R. department at the company headquarters personally and has been able to Whatsapp the documents to the HR contact as she has got the spelling changed; she had to produce a bank passbook, her Aadhar ID card and a PAN card (income tax) all with identical spelling of her name. We started the process on 17^th November and hope for a successful closure to the saga for Bardhi Bai soon.

On the Farm - October ’22

We have had a good monsoon but there are often trees that die from termites and/or flooding and this year’s casualty has been our unique bitter orange tree the fruit of which won the Commonwealth Prize in 2018 at the World Marmalade Awards held at Dalemain in Cumbria, U.K. My Bitter Orange and Ginger marmalade can no longer be made but there are green shoots coming from the roots so maybe one can be nurtured.

The mustard was sown on 28^th September and the concern was that it might not germinate before forecast heavy rain on 5^th-10^th October. We had 4 cms. spread over a week and luckily the mustard germination was not affected.

Rice was the key crop in October and it gradually developed feathery sprays of grain which ripened towards the end of the month. We had two varieties as we had run short of seedings of Pusa-1 and so brought in Pusa-4 from another farmer to be planted in about 3 bighas of land. The stem of the latter variety is longer and the plant seems to fall over when ripe. We are not sure if the extensive damage to this variety was from pigs and nilgai, over watering, or heavy grain causing the plant to fall.

The wildlife comes to the farm at night and we have no way of knowing. If the dogs bark we can go with a torch. If they are caught in the light they move away and can be chased off the farm that way. Here you can see a female nilgai in the torchlight in our Pusa-4 field.

On 31^st October the first fields of rice were "combined" and the grain left spread out to dry for a few days before being piled up.

Ranjit, who lives on our farm, with his wife and three young boys, acquired a second-hand Bajaj Discovery motorbike for Rs. 21000 with money given by his mother. He can take the whole family on it to visit his in-laws some 40 kms. away. He also takes his wife to work every day and collects her at 12.30pm. She works in a private nursery school about 10 minutes ride away by bike. His hours are adjusted so he can take her. Narayan, our cow man, also takes his wife to work, or their son does. They have two bikes in the family and Ranjit has one. Many of the motorbikes crowding Indian roads are ridden by men transporting their mothers or sisters to work.

Divali is an auspicious time to buy a new vehicle and it is honoured and decorated on the second day of Divali at Govardhan Puja which this year was moved to the next day because of a partial solar eclipse. Divali was 24^th October and Govardhan Puja the 26^th. Here Sugna Bai and Mohini Bai are preparing gobar figures of Krishna and his brother Balram honoured in farming families in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

To prepare for Divali Asha put leepna on our paths which will survive intact until spoilt by unseasonal rain.

We had a good crop of pumpkins this year in our vegetable garden and if you have tried to hollow out a pumpkin you will know how hard it is. These small pumpkins were left outside for a few days and the squirrels hollowed them out!

On the Farm - September ’22

We had rain on ten different days in September giving a total of 10.62 cms. with over 4 cms. falling on 10^th September. Queen Elizabeth II had died on the 8^th and a thunderstorm overhead sounded like a gun salute marking the end of her reign and the beginning of Charles III's. 11^th September was declared a day of mourning but being a Sunday few noticed. Older Indians mourn her passing and all that she stood for but younger Indians are indifferent.

We were able to move into our new kitchen on the 8^th as the teak doors had been fitted and varnished. It is wonderful to have plumbing that works and a floor that isn’t sunk, uneven and cracking.

The cows had been grazing freely on monsoon vegetation but the fields were ploughed, again on 8^th, and that marked the beginning of their incarceration in the cow shed until the rice harvest when fields would be grazable briefly before the wheat is put in. You can see the tractor ploughing in the background as the cows snatch a last bite.

The lawn got its annual cut. It is only cut once a year during the monsoon and looks distressingly brown for some time but soon recovers.

The rains always leave us with very muddy tracks and this year we had the chance to get a load of broken bricks which we laid into the mud to provide more support for vehicles.

Apart from watering the rice we were ploughing for mustard. The usual DAP fertiliser was not available and an imported APS was bought - ammonia, phosphate, and sulphur. Our usual American Pioneer mustard seed would have cost Rs. 30000 so we decided to try a local variety called Giriraj for Rs. 3600. Here it is being sown. Rice is in the foreground.

And to finish with a very Indian story of two young drunk youths who crashed their borrowed car at sunset a little way down the road from our gate and ran away having broken an electricity pole, caused a couple to fall off their scooter and themselves ending up nose down in a ditch.

The owner must have been very influential. By morning the electricity pole had been replaced, the power restored and the car extricated - all without the involvement of the police.

On the Farm - August ’22

The main themes of August were kitchen renovation and heavy monsoon rains. There were 34.1 cms. of rain in August which was less than July and less than 56.25 cms. of last August, but because the land was already waterlogged all fields were under water and not just rice ones.

Having planted the rice in July, the women began hand weeding it on 16^th August. Whatever the weather the women would keep weeding and take their lunch break on our stone flagged path.

The family living near the cowshed fought valiantly with sandbags to stop the flood water coming into their house. The water round about was deeper than wellies and the children had to wade to get to school. The cows were happy with their new concrete flooring and suffered less from foot infection and none of them as yet has got the dreaded ‘Lumpy Skin Disease’ which has killed thousands of cows in Western Rajasthan.

By the 10^th of August the granite floor tiles had been laid, the sink countertop put in place, the wall tiling, grouting, countertop moulding, skirting had all been completed. By the end of August the walls had been painted and then after some reflection repainted from green to grey, and joinery work had started on the under counter storage spaces to take rails for sliding drawers. Simultaneously, the teak wall cupboards and teak fronts to the storage spaces were being prepared in the local joiner’s workshop.

All this time we were cooking in a bathroom. Being August it was very humid and unpleasant. Most of the components of the old kitchen were reused: rubble on the drive, wooden doors given to the mason for reuse and stone counter slabs stored for future placement. Nothing to be taken to the local council ‘tip’ as in Britain. (The old steel sink was sold to a kabari wallah in October for Rs. 28/kg.)

This was the 75^th anniversary of India’s independence and private individuals were encouraged to fly the national flag from every house between 13^th - 15^th during the day and at night. 15^th is Independence Day. Vijay made a flag pole, bought a flag via Amazon and ran it up the new flag pole which was on the roof. Previously, the national flag had to be made of handspun and hand woven khadi cloth which limited production. Last year that was amended to include machine made, hence the unlikely introduction of Amazon into a previously very small Indian supply chain.

On 22^nd August our iconic gulmohar tree near the well blew over in strong winds. Termites had eaten the roots and it did not stand a chance. The bright red of the gulmohar flowers against the harvested and bleached wheat fields in April will be sadly missed.

Here is a 1997 photograph from our album of this lovely flowering tree.

On the Farm - July ’22

The main activities in July concern preparing the fields for rice to be transplanted. The seedlings were grown in a nursery on the next door farm and transplanted from 8^th July onwards.

Each section of a field has to be flooded and so the more rain that falls the better. In July we had 42.5 cms. which was double last July’s and was spread out throughout the month. The non-rice fields were also under water.

The women worked most days until the end of the month bent over standing ankle-deep in mud, and sometimes in pouring rain. A team of about 10 came.

I was away and so taking advantage of my absence the kitchen was totally redone. The floor had sunk over the course of 25 years and some of the Kota stone tiles had cracked. The plumbing had become a problem and no sink water could be allowed to drain down the pipe. Washing up bowls were tipped straight onto the bananas and other plants outside which was good for the plants.

Mishrilal, who worked with the contractor for building our house back in 1996, and who had just done our cowshed floor, came to talk about it on 14^th July. On the 18^th the men arrived and ripped out the old wooden units and supports, dug up the old floor and ripped the kitchen sink out. Dry gitti (gravel) was laid for the floor on soil and pounded down before a lattice work of sariyas (rebars) was placed over it and raised by 1.5" spacers to provide the appropriate amount of concrete cover between the gitti and the rebars. Each rebar crossover was tied with thin wire.

By 21^st the concrete was mixed and laid 4" deep over the gitti and the rebars. By the 31^st all the brick pillars were built to support the three granite countertops. Granite shelves were built in the units as the pillars were being raised. Two slabs of granite were glued together to give the required thickness of the countertops, which were put in place over the brick supports. The usual practice is to put the granite on the top and a less expensive marble slab underneath. Only the countertop for the sink remained to be done by the end of the month.

And while all this was happening, a temporary kitchen was setup in a downstairs bathroom!

By the end of July the rice fields were fully planted. The cows were grazing in the rapidly growing dhainch and the basic infrastructure was ready for our new kitchen. Broken up bits of old kitchen floor had been scattered on the muddy drive and so it was less muddy than usual and there were no deep ruts to be negotiated.

The new cowshed floor worked well and provided a dry are for the cows despite surrounding area being under knee high water. The family in the ground floor house were marooned but they managed and did not complain. At such times snakes can be a problem as their house was flooded. No major incidents though.

On the Farm - June ’22

Taking advantage of dry weather before the monsoon, Vijay used his new Husqvarna chainsaw to cut down overhanging branches and dangerously leaning trees. Here he is with his team.

The major work was concreting the cowshed half of which still had an earth floor that turned into mud during the rains. Mishrilal, who built our house some twenty-five years ago organised it with Siyaram, the diminutive mason, who would arrive on his motorbike with an assistant - sometimes male and sometimes female. One day a young mother came carrying her three month old baby on the motorbike. The baby, Karthik, slept in a sari jhula or swing between feeds and didn’t seem to mind the 45^oC ambient temperature.

Plastic mesh was used as reinforcement inside the concrete floor to strengthen it. The work took three days to complete and then the concrete was covered with plastic sheets and kept wet to cure it. Meanwhile the cows spent the nights in the empty vegetable garden and the days in the bagh or garden, a small tree plantation close to the house which gave shade during the scorching heat. After ten days, and just before the first heavy rain, they moved back to their cowshed.

We had 13.58 cms. rain in June which was good and moistened the ground ready for sowing. Dhaincha was broadcast by hand and then a tractor went over with a tiller and plank to bed the seeds down - used for green manuring.

On the 22^nd we spotted a tiny Collared Scops Owl on the pergola frame just outside the kitchen door. We have never seen one before in 25 years. It posed for photos and we could get very close to it, before it flew silently away.

On the Farm - May ’22

May is always the hottest month and this year it was relentless with a little rain on two occasions but the temperature remaining well over 40^oC and topping 46^oC on several days. We brought our thermometer in fearing the temperature might damage it as it was near the maximum it could record.

We had a good crop of jackfruit (katail).

We had harvested the wheat last month and were waiting to sell it for a good price as the world wide demand went up with grain shortages forecast and blamed on the Russian-Ukranian situation. We sold our wheat at Rs. 2275/quintal, the top of the market. Last year’s price was Rs. 1931. But alarmed by the inflationary pressure the Government banned export as yield is down due to the high temperatures in March across the Punjab and other wheat growing areas of North India.

Contracts to some African countries and to neighbours such as Bangladesh will be honoured but the Government feels it does not have spare capacity to compensate for shortages in Europe. The next trolley went for Rs. 2211/quintal, indicating the market had peaked.

Before loading a trolley with wheat it is winnowed to sieve out the numerous little weed seeds known as baathli. We stopped these seeds from being fed to the cows, who love it, as they would have distributed them around the farm in their cow pats!

A team of men from one family came to pick up the mustard bhousa and sell it on as bio-fuel for the factory furnaces. These people have their own survival problems and are not interested in Ukraine. The son of the eldest man had had a motorcycle accident and had a broken arm and head injuries. The doctors were asking for Rs. 50,000 to put a plate in this arm. Another day they had a phone call to say a 30-year old nephew, who had greeted them in the morning, had dropped dead with a heart attack. Doctors world wide call these deaths Sudden Adult Death Syndrome or SADS but their families suspect vaccine adverse reactions.

May is the traditional month for spreading the cow gobar/manure on the fields. This team of six loaded four trollies a day for two days in temperatures in the mid-forties and were paid Rs. 500 per trolley. It was then scattered in one of the fields by shovelling out of the back of the trolley as it was moved along with the tractor.

We got a quote for re-concreting the cow shed and that will be June’s story ....

On the Farm - April ’22

From the beginning of April the temperature was in the 40’s and so some farming activities took place at night. We put green netting around the house desert cooler to keep the direct sun off it and it ran day and night.

The garlic was harvested and plaited into separate plaits for each farm hand. Cherry tomatoes grown from Indian packeted seeds were a great success and a big surprise for Laxman who tended them so carefully and couldn’t understand why they did not grow into ‘proper’ tomatoes. Our own flax seed was harvested and winnowed using a big pedestal fan.

On 7^th April the first mustard trolley was sent to the market and received the top price that day having been judged to have the highest oil content. In a world wide shortage of vegetable oil, it sold for Rs. 6751 for 100 kgs. Last year the price was Rs. 4891 and in 2017 it was Rs. 3555. The second trolley was sent on 12^th April and was sold for Rs. 6560 which was above the quoted price for the day.

The main harvest in April is of wheat. The women cutters used to get 95 kgs. of wheat for each bigha of land area they cut. This year they negotiated 100 kgs. per bigha which we only agreed to if they hold it for 3 years. This means that ¹/₆ of the crop goes to the cutters. We require some hand cut as we need the chaff or bhousa for the cows. We had 15 trollies from 20 bighas of it loaded up at night over 3 nights and dumped in the bhousa shed or next to the cows in a big heap. Bhousa has become so expensive that it was probably worth one lakh rupees by some estimates.

Having negotiated the rate they wanted, the women cutters came on the 10^th with their sickles, lunch packs and work clothes and started cutting, working through each day in temperatures in the forties. By the 18^th they had piled the dry bundles into heaps and were ready to thresh by moonlight. They worked all night for two nights with a night off in the middle.

The rest of the wheat was harvested by this combine harvester. It started at 1330 hrs. and left at 1830 hrs. Last year’s rate of Rs. 500/bigha had increased to Rs. 700 because of a steep rise in diesel prices.

Our C306 heritage wheat grown for the house was hand cut by our women who live on the farm. Some seed from a shorter more modern variety had got in at the time of sowing and enough individual stalks had to be separated at the time of cutting to get a consistent seed for sowing the next season.

Our cows enjoyed being able to roam in the fields after the grain had been cut. One day, Henry, our young bull was reported to be very uncomfortable and rolling around. Over the phone the vet said to give him a pinch of cooking soda in water, so Narayan did just that and he was cured immediately.

On the last day of April the women wheat harvesters came with their men folk to weigh their share of the harvest. It is a joyous occasion for them to finally get their just rewards. The occasion has a lively, bustling atmosphere.

On the Farm - March ’22

The temperatures in March started in the 30's and ended in the 40's. It was unusual for March to be so hot. There was only 3 mm of rain and so unceasing sunny days.

The main activities were cutting the mustard during the day and protecting the growing wheat from nilgai and pigs at night. The night time rota continued as last month and at one point 20 nilgai were chased off the farm with a powerful torch. Here is a lone male in full day light brazenly defying us.

Feeding cattle became a national problem. We had kept back wheat bhousa from last year but ran out. The green fodder dried-up in the heat and local wheat bhousa was prohibitively expensive.

We finally found a small truck load of 18.5 quintals from Madhya Pradesh that had come all the way to Kota to sell hand cut and threshed bhousa. We had to pay Rs. 1100 for 100 kgs. or a quintal, so Rs. 20350 in total. No cows are producing milk at the moment and so their manure is being very expensively produced! Keeping cows is only economic if you produce all their fodder yourself.

On 6^th March the women resumed cutting mustard and it was threshed on 23^rd March and loaded into two trollies. The price of vegetable oil is soaring on the world market and it seemed a good idea to wait before selling.

March was the month of the Holi festival. For the last two years strangers have not been welcome. With all covid restrictions lifted we didn’t know if the village women would come back and greet us. They didn’t. Another tradition has died with covid. We had 9 men, 9 women and 5 children all morning as opposed to nearly 100 three years ago.

On the Farm - February ’22

The early mornings were too cool at 9^oC for breakfast outside in the garden until mid-February, which is unusual but the day time temperatures were in the low 30's. By February 24^th it was too hot for lunch outside. The main activities were watering the wheat and cutting the mustard from 25^th February.

At the beginning of February the mustard crop had dropped its vibrant yellow flowers and the pods were swelling. The young wheat was growing and tempting the wildlife, which could hide in the tall, dense mustard all day and come out at night. A rota was arranged of Ranjeet, Narayan and Vijay to walk around the farm each hour at night and chase away the nilgai deer.

Some nights there were none, but on 17^th February twenty-one nilgai were spotted. While jumping out over the gate one of them clipped the top bar breaking the pin.

We had a good range of organic vegetables in February including some delicious peas and a good potato harvest. We shared them out and kept some for ourselves. We also had a good crop of kumquat or Chinese oranges and I made kumquat and ginger marmalade.

Our former cow man, Mewa Lal, who had been coming every day to touch my feet, didn’t turn up on 5^th February and we discovered that his wife had died and he had taken her to his village near Hindoli, north of Bundi, for the cremation. She had literally faded away as she had been unable to swallow and digest food for months, but had never been seen by a doctor for this. She was in her sixties. Mewa Lal has recovered from a stroke but has to take care of his middle aged daughter with Downes Syndrome. There is no help from the state. We have heard that there is a tenant doing the cooking in his home. In such circumstances survival is a daily pre-occupation and foreign wars have no relevance.

One of the calves also died in February. Narayan, our current cow man, claims that he was feeding it but we have our doubts....

And to end with, a photo of a flock of little brown birds enjoying insects on the mustard as the pods swell and aphids try to suck the juices.

On the Farm - January ’22

We had 2 cms. of rain on 28^th December and the rice crop was still unsold and covered in black plastic but the dogs scampering after squirrels had left holes and the rain had got in. When the plastic was removed on 1^st January it was found that the top layer had sprouted in patches.

The sprouted rice was passed through another sifting machine and dried in the sun before being sold on 15^th January for Rs.13.51/kg. or half price. Nearly 900 kgs. had been damaged in this way.

More rain was due on 6^th and so the damaged rice was removed and dealt with separately. The women came to winnow and load the trollies and it was sold on 3^rd January for Rs. 25.11 per kg. The yield was 20% down on last year perhaps because of the heavy rain in November.

Ranjeet, the father of three boys, had not been giving any of his earnings to his wife and was running up debts at local shops and drinking heavily. On 2^nd January a deputation of women and children came at 2100 hrs. to ask me to do something as Ranjeet was being abusive. I called the police, and to help ‘Gypsy Madam’, three burly policemen arrived in a vehicle with flashing lights and removed him in his socks as he was too drunk to put on his shoes.

Next day the police rang Asha, Ranjeet’s wife to ask her to bail him out, but she didn’t have any money and wouldn’t go. In the end Ranjeet had to arrange his own bail and they released him. The situation has been resolved by Ranjeet having to agree, in writing, that his earnings are to be put in his wife’s bank account to which he has no access. So far so good.

The general feeling has been that January was colder than normal. Local firewood is removed by the head load as cooking gas has become so expensive. The minimum temperature was 5^oC and on a couple of days the sun didn’t get through and the temperature struggled up to 10^oC. One calf succumbed to the cold and the rest were given mustard oil everyday to fortify them.

The elderly find the cold hard to bear and on 29^th January, the Maharao of Kotah, Brijraj Singh, died of a heart attack aged 87. Schools and colleges have been closed this month and there has been a night curfew in place and Sunday lockdowns forcing shops, restaurants and shopping malls to be closed on one day a week.

Our dear daughter Anjali was home for a month and was able to continue her teaching online. She got a negative PCR test in Jaipur and was able to travel back to the UK before everyone on the farm caught one fever or another and experienced mild symptoms.

By the end of January the skies were clear and the air crisp after the rain and Asha and Shyam spent a day redoing the leepna while Sugna podded peas. The slow rhythm of a farm day was restored.

On the Farm - December ’21

Narayan, his wife Shyam, their eldest son Deepak aged 19, and their younger son Nitesh aged 14, had moved into their new home here at the end of November with Fruti their Pomeranian bitch. We have a rule that no other dogs can live on the farm but Fruti helps fill the gap left by the suicide of their middle son who hanged himself with his mother’s sari this time last year.

Lucy, our bitch, is very jealous of the pretty Fruti and attacked her on 9^th December in full view of everyone. Tigger and Doosra dashed to join in and within a few seconds she was on her back, totally traumatised with three sets of teeth marks. Since then she is locked up for a short period in their house when we go round with the dogs for our evening walk.

Another animal drama has to do with cows. Narayan reported some maggot wounds in feet and bleeding and we called the local vet compounder. He announced that the herd had foot-and-mouth but there was no talk of slaughtering them. He gave each 3 injections costing GBP 2.50 (Rs. 250) per animal. He said we could also try the local cure involving fish. I was keen to see this and gave Rs. 50 to Narayan to get some fish.

On 8^th December a Bhil arrived on a bicycle with a cotton bag of small fish caught in the canal. He tipped them on the ground and Narayan chose four. These were boiled up in water on his outdoor chula until they had disintergated. The water was diluted and cooled and thrown at the cow’s hooves with a plastic mug. The idea seemed to be that the smell would kill the maggots or drive them away. Since the injections had already dealt with the maggots it was declared a success. But what effect did the fish water have on the foot-and-mouth?

After heavy rain in November the land was quite moist. The main activities of the month were to hand cut and thresh the last 20 bighas of rice and sell the straw that had been left scattered around the field by the last month’s combine harvester before further rain arrived.

This family were originally from Pali district, and have settled near Kota. Using unpaid family labour they raked up the straw and took it away on a trolley doing two trolley loads a day for several days. They paid a nominal amount per bigha of Rs. 500, but it meant straw was removed and not burnt.

This is our team of labourers this winter rather depleted in number. They have cut 20 bighas of rice and loaded the straw into trolleys for our cows. They wanted to be photographed in the mustard with the house in the background.

After the rice fields were cleared of straw, the few remaining wisps were burnt and then the fields were ploughed and wheat planted. Before sowing our stored C306 deshi organic wheat had to be cleaned to remove any insects but this year there were none.

Our Christmas preparations include trimming this orange tree into a neat round that we can decorate with tinsel and baubles. This year, for the first time in 16 years our daughter Anjali was with us to help decorate the tree.

December ended with another 2 cms. of rain and more is forecast for January. Having stored the rice we winnowed it and loaded it into trolleys to be sold on 24^th December. The rest was well covered in thick black plastic to keep it dry.

On the Farm - November ’21

Divali was on 4^th November this year and as crackers were once again allowed, the air in Delhi and North India was foul. Delhi was so bad that schools and government offices were closed for days.

The second day of Divali is Govardhan puja, when the cows are decorated, honoured and venerated. The boy on the left - Deepak - has been looking after the cows while his father, Narayan (third in line from the left)was finishing his contract elsewhere. Now Deepak has gone back to his pre-lockdown job of selling mattresses in town and the family has bought a second brand new motorcycle. Here at Govardhan puja, they have decorated the new bike to invoke divine blessings.

And here is the women’s team that did the puja.

The combine harvester came on the 7^th and cut half the rice crop which was then spread out to dry. We knew rain was on the way so it was loaded into trolleys or gathered in a big pile and covered with black plastic when 3.51 cms. of rain fell over three days from 18^th November.

The rest of the unharvested rice was standing in the fields and after it had dried after the rains, it was cut by hand partly because a lot of it had been blown over by the high winds and partly because we wanted the pral or rice straw as feed for the cows. We had to pay the women Rs. 1800 per bigha to cut the fallen rice, well above the going rate of Rs. 1500. (Spot the young deer/nilgai where the line of rice meets the green hedge!)

In contrast to hand-cutting the rice, the combine harvester leaves the rice straw scattered across the fields and the easiest thing to do is to burn it, but this illegal as well as being undesirable. We sold it cheaply to someone willing to bring a team to rake it up for approximately Rs. 200/bigha as opposed to last year’s rate of Rs. 500. In some fields a little was burnt which had not been raked up. While this was happening COP26 was going on, trying to persuade India to sign up to stopping subsidies on cooking gas for the poor. Getting LPG connections to millions of villagers has been one of PM Modi’s greatest achievements. Cooking on wood, in confined spaces particularly, has been one of the leading causes of death from respiratory diseases as well as a major cause of deforestation. By removing subsidies on gas people would go back to cooking on wood. India has it’s own priorities and refused to be bullied.

The mustard, which had germinated poorly was badly affected by the heavy rain coming soon after watering leading to water logging as a result many plants died. On top of that deer/nilgai were biting off the shoots here and there. By the end of November, the mustard was beginning to flower. The bersin for the cows had been sown and the next jobs are to sell the rice and plant wheat.

Work on the room above the workers’ toilets went on slowly and the interior was painted a pale yellow. By 26^th November the doors were ready to be fitted. The joiner lives in the nearby village. On the 28^th Narayan and family moved into their new one room home with all their belongings.

Covid cases were non-existent but fear of a ‘third wave’ has kept private schools closed for younger children. The vaccine rollout has gone on steadily but with our rice cutting women all complaining of having been ill for three months since their first dose with fever and aching joints there is not much enthusiasm for a second dose. At the time of writing India has declared the pandemic over. Covid is now endemic. This has been achieved by early treatment of covid using a combination of ivermectine or hydraoxychloroquine, along with zinc, magnesium, Vit D and Vit C among others and vaccination has played a minor role. A success story not mentioned in the west.

And to end on a happy note, our fourth grand child was born on 15^th November, her elder sister’s 8^th birthday, and these were the mithais we distributed to celebrate the occasion.

On the Farm - October ’21

October is a transitional month between the high humidity and rain of September and a dry cool winter. It only rained once but 1.89 cms. fell and germination of the mustard was affected.

The beginning of the month had been busy with ploughing the fields ready for planting mustard. It was decided to go for the cheaper Pioneer 42 variety costing Rs.600/kg. against the latest version Pioneer 46 which cost Rs.800/kg. Pioneer seed is imported from America and is patented there. The supply can be turned off at any time. Sowing was done on the 12^th; seed, DAP and sulphur were mixed together. A shortage of fertiliser is forecast. Petrol, diesel and gas prices have increased Rs.30/litre over the last few months.

The rice was kept watered but by the end of October was looking ripe. The land to be used for our local wheat was prepared and ploughed.

I went to England on 1^st October for my brother’s funeral and had to quarantine for 10 days in one place and pre-pay for postal covid tests on days 2 and 8 of my arrival. A test in Jaipur before flying out, one in Reading before coming back and a final one at Delhi airport which cost Rs.500 for exactly the same thing as I’d paid 89 GBP in England.

On almost the same day as my brother died after a three-year decline due to progressive supra nuclear palsy, Sugna’s brother’s young son-in-law threw himself in front of a train with no warning leaving a young widow and a five-year old son, who have come back to live with her parents. That is the second suicide in the last few months to family members of our four employees.

Rajasthan has not had a covid death for three months but schools still only open for older classes with attendance on alternate days. Younger children started at the local government school for a couple of hours a day and were taught as per their age having been given automatic promotion even though they had never had formal schooling. The school was making no effort to bridge the gap despite official policies and the children are only learning to sit still and copy. Millions of young children in India must be in this position. Their education has been sacrificed to keep the rest of the economy going and to slow the spread of the virus. In that sense it has been a successful policy, but at what cost?

During October the building project progressed. Metal railing were made and attached to the steps. Men came to lay the floor tiles and by 25^th they were ready to be polished. Notice the figure under the sink polishing tiles.

Once the floor had been polished, the plumber and electrician arrived on the same day to fix the wiring and plumb the sink.

And to finish this month›s blog I would like to show the marble white elephants that are being assembled in Kota. This is a roundabout outside the law courts and apparently it will commemorate the 1857 rebels or 'freedom fighters' who were strung up to neem trees outside the British Residency while sitting on elephants. The elephants were then led away....

On the Farm - September ’21

In September we had light rain distributed throughout the month and a total of 11.17 cms. as compared to 56 cms. in August. The humidity was high as we were surrounded by flooded rice fields. The main activity was watering the rice and weeding it.

We employed this team of women to wade through the rice removing weeds. The cows can be seen enjoying grazing in the background on monsoon grass.

One more calf succumbed in September. With a white blaze on her forehead, she was proof that Diamond had fathered at least one calf before he died last month. Heera is Hindi for diamond and she had never been strong. She sat down in the sun one day and overheated and became bloated and couldn’t get up. Deepak sprayed her with water to cool her down and we called the vet who didn’t hold out much hope. Before I could buy the prescribed tonics after a night of regular sugar syrup doses which she had survived, she died.

Work on the RAT (Room Above Toilets) went on slowly. Hemraj, a plumber, came on 3^rd September and moved the water tanks up a floor onto the roof and did the necessary plumbing. You can see the young rice behind him.

Plastering was done after the plumbing was complete and this rickety bamboo scaffolding was put up. It’s no wonder that masons tend to be small, wiry and nimble as they have to risk their lives on such scaffolding with no safety equipment and no compensation for injury.

One interesting statistic for September was that 1.6 million students took a government teachers entrance examination in Rajasthan alone. The internet was turned off on Sunday, 26^th September throughout the state to deter cheating. Students were allocated test centres around the state and in one tragic incident a van load of 12 hopefuls were all killed as they made their way in the early morning from Baran to Shekawati in northern Rajasthan when their van ran into a truck.

Hundreds of thousands of candidates piled into buses and trains to reach their examination centres but there was no subsequent surge in covid19 which had disappeared from Rajasthan. Seasonal diseases such as malaria and dengue are the current health worries. The schools, however, are not all back and junior classes are still being taught online, or not at all as the case may be.

On the Farm - August ’21

The August story is about rain. We had 56.25 cms, 47.74 cms of which fell in the first week. The whole farm appeared to be one big rice field. In this picture the field in the foreground is not a rice field, although the others are. You can see beyond the wall, beneath the trees on the left, that the stream came right upto the wall so the excess water could not drain away.

On 4^th August there was 12.39 cms of rain in the night and the garden was under water. Rain leaked in multiple places in the old part of the house and the wiring was wet so the fridge and TV had to be moved out of the old part of the house. The men couln’t get out of their village until 2.00pm when the water had gone down considerably. Their local transformer was standing just above the water line and so the linesman turned off the power for two days and with it the internet.

The main casualty of such continuous rain was our black bull Diamond. Completely unexpectedly he sat down on 1^st August and refused to get up desite the efforts of 7 men using wooden poles to support him underneath and lift him. We gave him boiled wheat with gur am and pm to build up his strength. We put bhoussa (chaff) around and under him and moved him out of the mud. He was sitting up at 10.00pm on 5^th August but passed away in the night. The general feeling was that he was Angrezi or foreign i.e. the product of AI, he had weak teeth and so hadn’t been eating properly. He was 13, having adopted us as a 2-year old in 2012.

Diamond is seen here sharing some chickpea straw with his favourite companion. The problem then was how to get him to the road from where the authorities would collect him, for a fee. We had to remove some flag stones and drag him with a tractor. Hardly dignified, but there was no access for other vehicles because of flooding all around.

Later in the month the latest calf, Bahadur, also succumbed. We’d called the vet, but he died soon after receiving injections. He was very weak.

The main effort was to drain the excess water from the young not very tall rice and vegetables. Those who had other crops like soyabean or urad lost the lot. We were able to save most of the vegetables and the rice thrived.

Interestingly, after so much rain there was barely any for the next two weeks and the flooded fields dried out enough to be ploughed.

Construction had stopped on the workers' accommodation but started again at the end of the month. We had to move the water tanks from their first floor position up onto the second floor roof. Parts and pipes were ordered and were delivered in this little orange van with the signage on its side which read 'Ramlakhan Radhika Motors'. Ramlakhan was stopped by the police on his way here and found to have no valid insurance. He got away with Rs. 100 fine which was his profit on the Rs. 400 charged for delivering to us. Business has been so poor that he hadn’t been able to renew his insurance. The police know the situation and stop such people frequently to extract fines.

The economy is down but there is no covid-19 locally and very little in Rajasthan where ivermectin is used as a therapeutic. There has been continuous pressure on our staff to get vaccinated though; being so thin and light anyway, they have lost days of work and thus income, through being ill after receiving their vaccinations.

On the Farm - July ’21

July was an anxious month waiting for rain. In the end we had approximately 20 cms. mostly in the last week. The building contractor Mishri Lal, managed to coordinate materials, shuttering, roofer and labourers and the support for the roof of the room above the toilet block was prepared by 6^th July by five men fixing shuttering and rebars. We covered the walls with thin plastic so the brick work wouldn’t be splattered on concreting day. The plastic will also serve as a separation joint between the brick walls and the concrete roof to allow for movement resulting from contraction and expansion with temperature variations.

On 7^th July a team of 12 labourers arrived early, the cement mixer came at 9.00am, concreting started at 11.00am and was finished by 3.30pm. The labourers were thin wiry youths who formed a human chain and passed full metal tigaris of concrete up to the roof of the room above the toilet block. The women in the team supplied the hungry cement mixer with dry ingredients.

We managed to get the roof done the day before we left for Russia for a week and the first heavy rain in July came in our absence and some 33 bighas of rice was transplanted while we were away.

If the rice transplanting is done while the soil is still dry, the water that is pumped in the fields quickly sinks into the soil and so everyone was looking to the skies for rain as it was late. The first stage is to flood the field and Ranjeet started on the 18^th. The flooded field is graded and levelled and the earth churned up by the tractor before the planters arrive, who then are able to transplant into churned up soil with some ease.

This year the team of 11 women negotiated a pay rise to Rs. 1500 per bigha. They have to stand ankle deep in mud bent over in rain or shine for this. A team of 11 started on our 20 bighas on the 24^th and the heavy rain started on the 26^th and continued until the end of the month.

By 31^st July, 53 bighas of rice had been planted and the women must have planted at least another 50 elsewhere. The change is rapid and dramatic from bare earth to flooded rice fields.

The threat of covid has receded and there were few new cases in Rajasthan and the covid wards were empty. Vaccination was going on on a voluntary basis and vaccines were being offered to everyone over 18, but with a shortage of doses there were enormous queues. They seem to be trying to give one dose to as many people as possible to hide the fact that a large percentage of people are refusing a second dose in view of the severe reactions they and their colleagues experienced after the first dose. Serum surveys show a very high level of natural immunity to the virus. To keep the fear alive the authorities are predicting a terrible third wave that will affect children and so the schools are still not opening for primary classes in the foreseeable future. This is a betrayal of children’s right to education. Some states are sending the teachers to the children but not Rajasthan.

On the Farm - June ’21

By the beginning of June, after unusual rain in May i.e. 3.3 cms., the farm was tilled and waiting for rain but it didn’t come. On eight days we had short showers only amounting to 2.17 cms. The temperature also climbed and for the last few days of June was about 42^oC with a hot wind.

We sold some surplus pral or rice straw for Rs. 2000 and paid Rs. 4500 to buy some buffalo khad (fertiliser) from the same people. Here they are unloading it and leaving it in neat piles across the field which had to be spread by hand. In the early morning the peacocks were attracted to the gobar (manure) and one morning there were 3 peacocks each on his own castle of a manure pile. I couldn’t capture that but the picture below gives an idea of our peacock population on the farm.

The dogs and calves were very troubled by ticks and we tried not to use a pesticide on them. By soaking fresh neem leaves in water and grinding them into a paste which is sieved through muslin, a fairly effective anti-tick medicine is made. It was used several times by being sprayed on the cows and calves and was effective enough.

Here Lucy is being bathed and treated with our home made neem insecticide. It wasn’t really effective enough and we resorted to the very toxic Nayflee or Spot-on which you spot down the dog’s back. This contains the very toxic FIBRONIL and METHOPRENE which is ending up in rivers and water bodies in Britain in significant amounts as pet owners use flea treatment and bathe their pets regularly and unnecessarily with chemicals which are banned in agriculture. Some rivers down stream of water treatment plants contain 38 times the permitted level! There are 10 million pet dogs in the U.K. and 11 million cats with an estimated 80% being treated for fleas with fibronil.

And from fleas to bats which have been very much in the news as a source of corona and other viruses. This fruit bat was spotted comouflaged in the leaves and we were surprised to see how fluffy its belly was. You can spot its legs and wings more clearly in the second photo.

June continued to be a bad month in Rajasthan for covid-19 but there were no deaths in our village. As conditions gradually eased all shops were allowed to open from 6:00am - 11:00am with a 3-day lockdown at the weekends.By the end of June this was reduced to only Sunday.

Sugna, our maid, had been living on the farm but this was only partly for fear of bringing covid from the village to the farm. She was weary of being abused by her daughter-in-law and decided a tension free life was preferable. On 8^th June, after two weeks, Sugna received a delegation including her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren all begging her to come home so she agreed on condition that the verbal abuse would stop and she went home that night. We hear very little about the relatively new trend of 'mother-in-law abuse'!

A village leader and former Sarpanch died of cancer this month but we couldn’t participate in any funeral rites. A young man was crushed to death by his tractor which overturned on him. It is thought he dozed off while driving at night. There is no reliable data for covid deaths versus others.

Our building works made no progress because of lockdown and then from shortage of trained masons so everyone wanted them at once. We are hopeful that roofing work will start in early July. The main farming activities have involved clearing scrub and preparing vegetable beds. We don’t usually have vegetables planted by this time as they get waterlogged or choked with grass as the patch reverts to a grass field during the monsoon.

Time will tell.

On the Farm - May ’21

A semi-lockdown had been expected from 18^th April involving the closure of non-essential shops and night curfews. Fruit, vegetables, dairy and grocery shops were open until 11.00am. Our masons were able to come but, as expected, a full lockdown came into force from 10^th-24^th and was extended.

There were worrying stories from the villages of 2-4 (do-char) people a day dying from covid-19 after a mere four days of illness. On 12^th May the first death occurred in our village. The deceased was brought back from hospital in zipped plastic and taken straight to the cremation ground by men in plastic. Our milkman (he buys our cows milk) was isolating at home with covid but buffaloes needed milking and the milk round needed doing so after 11 days of no one coming to buy our excess milk his son started his round.

The second unusual feature in May this year was the weather. We had some rain on nine different days including 2.11 cms. on 21^st May and the farm flushed with green grass. This was partly due to a cyclone off the west coast of India. We were grateful as the temperature didn’t go above 42^oC all month - we normally have 45^oC for at least a week with dust storms. Once it was mere 25^oC.

On 1^st May Tikku produced a little red calf with a white blaze on her forehead. This was proof that our black Holstein-crossed bull Diamond named after the white blaze on his forehead, had taken on the head of the herd role after the death of the former patriarch Lasho. We called the calf Heera, which is Hindi for diamond.

The masons were able to come at the beginning of the month and were just able to finish the lintels and the last course of bricks before lockdown. (The formerly healthy uncle of one of the masons had died eight days after being vaccinated but the link was denied by doctors so no one accepting liability.) In some villages people run and hide when the vaccination team arrives as they are more scared of the vaccine than the virus.

We employed a family team to collect the wheat straw from the fields on 1^st May and unload it at the cow shed. Three men and three women came and a young boy also came to look after a baby. The labourers worked in the cool of the night and slept on the straw in the open.

On the 2^nd the men filled the bhousa ghar through the roof.

On 4^th May, one of our men who has been with us for years announced that he was leaving the next morining! He’d got a lift to Madhya Pradesh with a truck that had brought the dowry for a young bride, probably a bed, a metal cupboard and maybe a cooler plus other home making articles. He and his son packed up at midnight and left at 3.00am. Although the border between Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh was officially closed the driver must have had a permit and they were allowed through. Amar Lal’s wife and two daughters were already in his village.

Ranjeet promptly moved into Amer Lal’s house during the day and vacated his house which needs serious repairs. Ranjeet is a capable worker but has a weakness for drink. He spent 12^th May in police custody as a drinking companion had accused him of stealing his mobile phone after a drinking session. He managed to engage a lawyer, was produced in court, and given bail, but no one would pay it for him. At last he borrowed it from somewhere and was able to come home.

Last month we showed the laden jackfruit tree. This month we harvested some bananas from just outside the kitchen door. I made kebabs from the green bananas and curry from the flower and stems. I made a Sri Lankan coconut sauce and although the florets of the flower tasted a bit bitter, the sauce was good! When the bananas ripened they were delicious whizzed up with our own deshi mangoes.

On the Farm - April ’21

A male nilgai (blue bull) watches as the year moves onto April. One year on from total lockdown, and the direction of travel was going towards a total lockdown again. The vaccine roll out started in India in mid-January and a surge in cases started at roughly the same time. Farmers had been sitting shoulder to shoulder all winter with no spread but something has changed.

Cambridge University researchers after sequencing the genomes found that the UK variant had come into India in December in one part of the Punjab and Mumbai and had spread from there. Being more transmissible (so we are told) but no more lethal it has led to hundreds of thousands of new infections every day and a tiny percentage of those cases end in death but the world’s media was flooded daily with harrowing footage of desparate family members searching for oxygen for their loved ones. In Delhi damaged lungs from long term air pollution has added to the lethal mix. To put the deaths into some context: It is estimated that 1.5 million Indians die a year from air pollution, which is 4383 a day; Corona death figures are around 4000 at the moment but these may be only those who die in hospitals and not those who die quietly and unsung in villages; 27000 all cause mortality is a daily figure.

Who will notify the authorities of the death of a poor person with no property to pass on? How many old people are dying unmourned abandoned by their children? During a lockdown with no visiting of family allowed and no income as no work how can children care for their parents? This is the grim reality. The missing adults may only be noticed in a house to house survey checking the electoral lists and children may never be missed officially.

We also do not know of post vaccination deaths as these are officially denied. We hear of them but this is anecdotal evidence as there is no official reporting system for adverse effects in India. We do know that the chosen vaccine brand ambassador for Tamil Nadu, a very well known 59 year old comedian called Vivek, died the day after being vaccinated on television of cardiac arrest.

And so against a backdrop of vaccinations, seasonal fevers and malaria, April unfolded.

Our organic heritage wheat for home consumption is being cut here by Laxman. It took less than one hour to thresh. The yield was less than half that of a commercial variety.

A combine harvester arrived at 9.45am on 10^th April and had harvested 33 bighas by lunch. 20 bighas were hand cut by sickles and threshed at night on the 18^th and 19^th. The levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) are often very high, particularly at night and we don’t know why. This is no different from most cities in the world but we wonder why it's highest at night and how dangerous it is. When it's cloudy our air sometimes smells gassy and we wonder if local industry is releasing gas at night.

For two weeks from 18^th April we had semi-lockdown with night curfews and only essential shops open until 11.00am. Construction work stopped apart from government projects. We were able to keep going as our masons could come round on the bypass and avoid police checks. At the beginning of April the walls for an upper room above the new toilet block were marked out with blue lines. The two masons with an assortment of a single labourer each would arrive sporadically on two motorbikes. By the end of the month the walls were nearly complete.

Six women cut, bundled, stacked and threshed the wheat and were paid in wheat. They negotiated an increase from 90kgs. per bigha to 95kgs. and came to bag their share on the 18^th. We always weigh the women too and one woman weighed just 40kgs. You are not allowed to donate blood unless you weigh over 50kgs. and yet the same vaccine dose is given to a 40kgs. adult as to her 69kgs. team mate.

After the combine had finished, a straw cutting machine came round to chop the remaining wheat stalks and turn it into cattle feed. The machine charged Rs. 1500 per trolley and it could be sold for Rs. 2000.

The first trolley load of our wheat was sold on 22^nd April for Rs.1931/100kgs in the grain market. We decided not to sell locally from the farm and not to encourage strangers entering and mixing with our men.

On 21^st April a cow called Ramini gave birth to a little female calf (in circle). She wouldn’t let anyone near her and I had to fetch Mewa Lal who has known her all her life. He wasn’t allowed near either, but by feeding and distracting her, Deepak was able to lassoo her horns and tie her up. Her calf was picked up and moved and she followed later. We thought little Surya (Sunshine) had a spinal injury but by evening she could stand up and was just weak.

While March was a mustard month, April was definitely a wheat month. It also saw our lone jackfruit tree resplendent with a promisie of a rich harvest.

On the Farm - March ’21

March was "mustard" month. This is the team of hard working women who cut and threshed it. After their work they were given laddus and Kailash, the team leader, is holding the box of laddus. They have been searching for ber (berries) from a tree behind them.

After cutting and drying the mustard was threshed and the first trolley left for the mandi on 3^rd March with the second going on the 5^th. The price of Rs. 4871/100kgs. was good and reflects the increased demand for pure mustard oil after the ban on blending mustard with rice bran oil, soyabean or palm oil came into effect on 1^st October, 2020. In 2018 the price had been Rs.3632, in 2019 Rs. 3501 and last year Rs. 3948.

After the threshing the piles of chaff called bhoosa are left behind and they were sold at Rs. 500 per bigha of land area. It is usually a time consuming business to load the bhoosa trollies which are a feature of Indian roads at this time but this year the buyer came with a tractor mounted shovel and a lorry and the job was soon done. It was like watching a ballet as the tractor twirled and pirouetted raising and lowering its shovel.

The building work progressed slowly and concreting of the steps was done at the beginning of month. It was too small a job to warrant the hiring of a concrete mixer. Once the steps set, work on the room above the toilets commenced.

We had little rain in March, but it was an unusually hot month. It started on 13^oC minimum and 34^oC maximum and finished at 27^oC minimum and 34^oC maximum. We had a very hot wind on 7^th March with the temperature rising to 37^oC so we needed the cooler for the first time this month.

This alsi or flax was hand cut and dried and after threshing the stalks were tied into bundles and attached to a metal frame which protects the cooler from the direct rays of the evening sun. By spraying the flax with water we hoped to increase the cooling effect of the cooler but the smell was unpleasant.

Another crop that was harvested in March was the garlic. After drying it was plaited into 7 large bundles and shared. We keep one bundle for the house, one for sowing and distribute the others to our farm team. Tigger likes to keep an eye on things!

On the Farm - February ’21

February started with temperatures of 7^oC and 28^oC. By the end of the month it was 17^oC and 35^oC.

The women came to cut the mustard from the 12^th. The team was about 12 strong but the mother of one of the women died on 21^st February and at least four women stopped work for 12 days for the mourning period. It took five days to cut the ripe mustard and it was left to dry. While cutting the first field a family of seven pigs trotted out!

Panditji’s wife died on 24^th February having been bed ridden for some years and the full team was involved in the funeral so they restarted on 25^th February, cut some mustard sown later and piled up the crop into gallas ready for threshing. Neither of the old women’s deaths were covid releated. There have been no covid deaths around here, but still the primary schools are closed.

My three pupils were very excited as their parents were asked to the school to enrol them but it turned out that they can’t start until 1^st April. There is no justification for depriving young children of formal education, particularly if they can walk to their school.

Construction of a room over the toilet block started with a support for an outside staircase. Home designed and made metal ties were used to tie in the reinforced grouted masonry. (A wall in a newly constructed workshop nearby blew out in the wind recently as the bricks had not been properly secured to the concrete pillars!) On the 28^th form work for the stairs was put in place.

One of our cows, Charlotte, named after the designer of our upholstery print in 2012, had her fourth calf, Reena, on the 23^rd. I have not noticed any of our cows sitting with a protective hoof round their new born before.

Our wheat was watered for the first time in February after urea had been broadcast. Our taller traditional non-hybrid variety of wheat was not given chemical fertiliser. Our vegetables are not given chemicals either. Laxman made a pesticide by soaking pounded neem leaves in water and spraying the sieved result. This back sprayer is battery operated and rechargeable. Hand pumping is not required. We have some cherry tomatoes for the first time this year and I am looking forward to them. Our pea harvest was delicious. New potatoes were dug up this month and we shared them out.

While the young wheat was vulnerable up to 16 nilgai would come in at night to browse and that was a nightly job scaring them away with a powerful torch. And to end this month’s blog with a bird species we were very pleased to welcome this pair of Mahratta woodpeckers which drilled several holes in our dead tree trunks before choosing one. This year is our 25^th on the farm. A cycle of tree planting and dying has taken place and woodpeckers and other species are taking up residence.

On the Farm - January ’21

January is our coldest month and temperatures at night dropped to 5^oC but day time temperatures were mostly in the mid-20's. We only had one day when the sun didn't come through and the temperature struggled up to 18^oC. Often we have foggy spells but that didn't happen this year. We did however have unusually heavy rain at the beginning of January and again on 8^th and 9^th January amounting to 5 cms.

The young wheat benefitted as did the mustard which began the month in flower but by the end was beginning to ripen. Here is a misty mustard photograph taken on 30^th January.

The main farming activities were cutting undergrowth from last monsoon, repairing the nilgai (deer) fence to try and deter the 14 or so nilgai spotted one night, and watering wheat.

We are about to build a first floor room over the new toilet block and so the space was pegged out for the base of the external staircase.

Another project is to have at least two sun dials made using some French software (Shadowspro) and so measurements were taken to determine the declination of the walls where they will be fastened.

The vegetable garden this year looked immaculate as we are employing three men full time on the farm to help the local economy. Here you can see the flowering flax or linseed in the foreground.

Schools, colleges and educational institutes went back on 18^th January but junior classes are still closed despite Covid-19 having almost disappeared from Rajasthan and certainly from the villages. I taught three farm children each day to help as I forsee a national crisis of poorer children dropping out of mainstream education when schools reopen.

The world was made aware of the low transmission of Covid-19 in India as thousands of maskless farmers demonstrated in huge crowds and camped out in near freezing temperatures to try to force the government to backtrack on its neo-liberal agenda of opening up Indian agriculture to big agricultural companies such as Cargill and Monsanto. We personally are unlikely to be affected by the so-called reforms as we will still sell our crops in the mandis and are unlikely to enter into contract farming. We do support the independence of small farmers however and bio-diversity and feel that control of seed production is at stake, a matter of national security. With so much unemployment and under employment millions are dependent on growing their own food and access to land. The old model of forcing people off the land and into the cities will not work with no jobs to go to, or at best menial ones with no security or guarantees. With no furlough system and government support people have to support themselves.

We had some spectacular sunrises in January as well. These purple clouds were photographed on Makkar Sankranti which each year falls on 14^th January.

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