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Message from Krishna

Dear Friends,
Last weekend we completed yet another amazing permaculture workshop. 10 participants came from all over South India to spend an intensive weekend exploring a road back to Nature. We spent time creating circle gardens and an amazing field with so many layers of intercrop from amaranth to tapioca and pumpkins to sour sop trees.
This morning the field got a little rain and the amaranth is boosting! As Well as learning how to make our our own bio-enzyme and hand soap so we could recycle water, the workshop also explored harvesting about 40 different plants that we used to make salad, chutney and our famous tribal booster juice. This experience is so precious in that we just don't have exposure to this many edible plants and to harvest them ourselves and use them in a truly delicious salad is a lesson of permaculture that is not found in any manuel or design course.
We also read from the One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka, discovering his non-dualistic philosophy and I think people could see how it related to the work and experience they were having on the farm. What makes our workshops really unique though, apart from me performing songs from my albums!, is without a doubt the food that is served for the group breakfast lunch and dinner. A raw papaya salad that people never get bored of! millet idli and pongal, coconut chutney, drumstick spinach sambar, pumpkin soup, plantain chips and ragi chapati. I could see in people's eyes after the meals that they were having a profound experience simply by eating local fresh food!

3 Days Intensive Permaculture Workshop | 10th January - 12th January 2020

Yours,
Krishna

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

Community Supported Agriculture | Fruit & Vegetable Basket

Radish! beautiful white radish are in our baskets again. Wing beans and ladies fingers are still going strong. French beans have started and rocket, lettuce are starting to be packed in banana leaves. It looks really nice! plantains are quite regular and parsley is on it's way! With rain this morning we can expect alot from all the later crops like sweet potato and carrots. There is so much diversity of produce that to write about it seems like bragging, but walking through the fields you can't help but feel proud that you have had the chance to be part of this splendour!

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. We are able to value these foods because we are creating a community around the subject of nutrition. The longer participants subscribe for the baskets the cheaper they are and the closer their connection with the farm and their understanding of these local foods the more we can offer.
Baskets are available for pick up from the farm on Monday and Friday and there is a Pondicherry pickup Wednesday afternoon.
Please email solitudepermaculture@gmail.com for sign up.

Field Notes
Intercropping, The Next Level

Permaculture is all about relationships and in the fields that is often about how to mix crops together and how to use space in creative ways.
This year the farm is choc a block with many crops and we are having to think how to create more space.
I was feeling a little disappointed that there were no empty fields to do field crops like Dal and Ragi then I had an idea.

Some years ago I was trying to integrate ragi with brinjals and find a way to mix field crops with horticulture. Now this year we are using the trenches in between the vegetable beds to grow corn and green gram or ragi. If the vegetable bed has a crop that will grow taller like Tapioca then we will put cow pea in the trench which will creep up the tapioca to the light. The other good thing about this idea is the climate is awesome for growing anything now and the dhal grows especially well with the early morning dew. So hopefully in a few months we will have photos to share of how this has worked out. If you want to be creative in your field or garden look at the space you have and think about the physiology of the plants you are growing and their time duration and see how they will interact. It is fun and productive!

Solitude Farm Cafe

Solitude Farm shop is an alternative to other Auroville stores for purchasing fresh organic produce grown at the farm. At the moment we offer wing beans, ladies fingers, radish, rocket, plantain, spinach, papayas, green papaya and chikoos.

We also have some dried goods like roselle and later we will have butterfly pea. Our ayurvedic powders, which are especially focused on reverse diabetes are also available along with seeds and Krishna's cds from his band Emergence. Seasonal jams, at the moment it is Kumquat Marmalade! and bio-enzyme and our own hand soap are also on the shelves.

There are many farmers selling similar fresh produce at the local Auroville farmers outlet called Food Link and so Solitude Farm Shop takes the stress off Foodlink of too much of the same produce. I think having different outlets with different colors is great and customers who eat at the cafe are able to take the produce they enjoyed for lunch back home with them.

Solitude Farm Cafe - Open | Mon-Sat | 9AM - 3PM

Music from Solitude

Love Of My Life - EMERGENCE | Can You Record Me?
You can listen to all Emergence tracks here.

What is happening on the farm ?

Regular Workshops

Every Saturday 11:30 A.M - Weekly tour and introduction to the Solitude Farm

Every Friday 9:30 AM | Natural Soap Making Workshop
It is imperative that we stop polluting our water sources with chemical soaps. By making our own soap with natural local resources, we can recycle all our waste water to grow food. The Process is simple, easy and fun.

Every Wednesday 9:30 AM | Secrets Of Our Salad: An Introduction to Permaculture
Secrets of our Salads is an exploration of the values of local food which is at the very heart of permaculture.

Every Tuesday 9:30 AM | Cooking With Local Food
The wealth of local foods, their nutritional and ayurvedic values reflects the greatness of this culture. Many of these foods have been eclipsed by the industrialised agriculture and this workshop aims teaching people how to revalue them in traditional and fusion cooking styles.

Please email us at solitudepermaculture@gmail.com to sign up for the workshops.
Contribution required for all the workshops, except the weekly farm tour.

3 Day Intensive Permaculture Workshop
People have so many concepts about everything even about Permaculture! It means different things for different people. For me permaculture really boils down to the food on the table. This is a photo from the Secrets Of Our Salad, which is one of the module from 3 day Intensive Permaculture Workshop which is happening 7th to 9th Feb 2020. All this produce was harvested by workshop participants and transformed in the most amazing salad that demonstrates all the important characteristic of local food, include a direct solution to climate change. Learning about local foods in this very practical way starts to integrate permaculture in your daily life.
Dates for upcoming Permaculture workshop: 7th to 9th Feb 2020, 27th to 29th March 2020, 10th to 12 April 2020
Please email us at solitudepermaculture@gmail.com to sign up

Update on Mid-Day Meal Scheme:
We are looking for an enthusiastic, pro-active individual who is willing to intern for three months to help facilitate preliminary mapping and analysis. This internship would provide the opportunity to experience starting with the ground work to run the pilot project.
Skill:
1. Fluency in English and Tamil
2. Advanced computer skills, data compilation and analysis and creating presentations
3. Grant writing and project report writing. Any experience in facilitating a project, background in social work, development studies will be added advantage. This position is open for candidates in and around Pondicherry.
Interested candidates who meet this criteria can email their CV to solitudepermacultre@gmail.com

Copyright © 2020 Solitude Farm & Organic Kitchen, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
solitudepermaculture@gmail.com

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Krishna McKenzie · Solitude Farm · Auroville, 605101 · India