Monday, April 30, 2007

My farming journey so far !!

It all started of very casually -- I had already been farming since 2000 in Himachal after quitting from the regular 9-5 job cycle . My family has always been into farming , so it made it much easier for me compared to a lot of other people I know who would luv to quit the corporate life and do something like this . I have to thank my parents who really supported me inspite of thinking that I was better of doing a job .

The first thing that I did was to stop the use of any form of chemical fertilisers in my fields , which did come up for flak as it wud affect the quality of the fruits and stuff . But I felt it was necessary as we had ruined our soils and made the fruits and vegetables into a dose of chemical which wasn't fair fopr those wanting to eat it .. food after all is meant to be healthy !!! It did affect the production of our orchards for a year or so .. but we realised that the fruit started to taste better and stayed crisper for much longer than the fruit in the neghboring fields . the next step was to try and find people in the cities who would buy directly from me ... as the wholesale market was never gonna appreciate organic produce .

Meanwhile my best friends mother got diagnosed with cancer and that got the doctor telling him that he should feed her with a chemical free diet ... and that started our hunt for things organic . Veges and fruits was still possible .. but never the less we decided to grow them in a farm just outside Delhi . But the biggest hurdle was to try and find milk that was from an animal that wasn't injected with any of them hormonal injections or adulterated with any external substances . This lead us out into the countryside where after a lot of search we found one ex army man who was producing such milk . And thats where the thought crept in .... I was looking for a product that homes would use daily and would also allow me to offer the produce from my farm directly into their kitchens . This way I would beat the normal system of going through the wholesale market , get better prices and the final consumer would also get organic produce cheaper . So the survey started .. spoke to lots of friends if they would be interetsed in pure milk , ready to pay the price , etc etc . It told me that this option needed to be explored seriously . It took me more than a year to try and give it a shot as we are a farming family and business doesnt come that easy to us , plus we wanted to keep the concept as close to simple as we could .

Now after a lot of hard work , encouragement from friends and their friends we have reached a point where we have a few cows giving us milk at our farm just outside Gurgaon . The fodder is all grown on our own farm without the use of any fertilisers .. we only use vermi compost -- plus the cows are not tied all the time .... we leave them free in their play area as much as we can . They decide where they wanna sit .. when they wanna eat , so nothing is forced on them .

We have devised a membership programme .. that allows a family with children to join up by paying a one time fees and that will entail them to get fresh milk , fresh organically grown vegetables and fruits , visits to the farms with their children and a few other benefits . Also our produce will not be available in the market as we will deliver it directly to your door . This is being done so that NO ADULTERATION can happen and the produce is what we claim it to be .

We still in a starting phase ... and hoping that people do take to it . We will expand to a level that we can handle as per demand , we not hoping to be a major dairy as that would make us lose a lot of teh personal touch which we DO NOT want to lose . As of now delivery zone is only within Gurgaon but we hoping we can offer the scheme in Delhi soon .

This blog is gonna be more like a farm dairy .... about our members , the hurdles that we face ( like cows spilling half the milk ) , the lives of the cows ( their mother hood , illness, etc ) , and anything and everything connected to the farm . Hope it doesnt get people bored --

As of now we have 6 beautiful Holstein cows and we are looking for names for them , so if you have any suggestions pls feel free to throw them our way !!! Will keep you all updated as regularly as time permits ..

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Starting off ...

Im very new to the blogging world so the first few write ups are probably not gonna be very interesting or creative . The blog has been started for me to share my experience of trying to get people to read about the developments on my organic farm and my endeavour to try and get ppl to eat pure unadulterated fresh food .

So lets see how it goes from here on ....

Shadow

Shadow
with a lil St.Bernard pup !!!

DUKE ..

DUKE ..
Hes adopted that lil kitten