Mrs.Malathy's rooftop garden

She looks like Mma Ramotswe out of "Ladies No 1 Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. She runs a detective agency in Chennai and has solved 7000 cases in the last 20 years or so - averaging one case a day!
In her spare time she takes care of a rooftop garden on her Medavakkam residence, a 1/2 acre farm in Agaram 8 kms away. I found her very innovative and after meeting her I realized that many of the roadblocks that frustrate us only point to a lack of creativity. She has managed to grow creepers and grape vines from the ground up to the first floor where they form a beautiful canopy over the house. She grows them first in a cement bag filled with coconut fibre and compost with a tall stick stuck into it. When the creeper grows up to the top of the stick it is transplanted into the soil next to the house and allowed to creep up to the top. Simple and effective!

Here's an article in the Hindu about her.

Pillayar Nattam land acquired by MLA

who is planning on quarrying it for granite. For this holy purpose, he has built a tar road through reserve forest. On the positive side, at least we didn't get a quarry in our backyard. Don't lose hope though says Muthu - there's a spot near Gopalpatti on the Dindugal Nattam highway that is highly regarded by kaattu erumais and other friends.

Land near Pillayar Nattam

I looked at land in Pillayar Nattam which is around 40 km from Dindugal and 60 km from Madurai. It is surrounded by hills on the South, West and North and is open to the East. It is reasonably isolated and has a small population so the likelyhood of conflict with neighbours should be lower. It seems to have a lot of water - several people we spoke to said that they never had any water problems. Here's the view to the South:

And the view to the East:
There is a small temple to the North with some goats grazing around it:

Organic farming experiences

I spent 4-5 months with a couple of communities at Auroville (Aurobrindavan - Bernard and Deepika and Solitude - Krishna). Learnt a lot and met some very interesting folks.

Bernard's place is very interesting because the land is highly eroded and has absolutely no humus and is rock hard if you try to dig. Deepika has managed to create raised beds using the Prayog Parivar method that yield very healthy and tasty (trust me to verify that!) vegetables.

At Krishna's place we planted a lot of lettuce - starting with seeds in small cups in the nursery and transplanting after a couple of weeks. Planted tomatoes, several kinds of very tasty basil (there was an anise basil that I liked a lot), cucumber, pumpkin, brinjal. Threshed the ragi, red rice. Mulched a lot! Built earthen walls for Krishna's house. Made ragi dosai, pongal, rotis. And I nearly forgot - we used to harvest papayas every day in the morning. Believe me, catching a 3 kg papaya falling from 20ft is no joke. I bet after that I'd have been better than the average on the Indian cricket team. Generally had a lot of fun!

Then I spent about 3 months with my friend Siddarth in Sengottai - he has a small fruit orchard. The land is on a small hillock and you can sit and see other hills around and clouds floating in between. And you can see the checkerboard paddy fields just beyond. Its all quite pretty until you realize that to water anything you have to lug a kodam up a 100 feet! My land is going to be like a billiards table :-)

We started a vegetable patch and planted kottavarai, mullangi, jack beans, ginger, turmeric. We tested Bernard's tips to use charcoal to minimise leaching by mixing charcoal into one bed and the turmeric from that bed was definitely bigger and healthier. Also planted tuvarai and ragi on the bunds. We started a compost heap but apparently it didn't do too well - S thinks its because the water got in. So he is trying again without soil and covered with a plastic sheet. Climbed a lot of trees - specially the jack because I wanted to make as much jam as I could! I think we have nearly perfected the art of making good chakka jam and mango pickle that does not spoil easily.