Living at Navdanya
It’s our first rainy day today at the farm!
So, with no farm work, I am cozied up in bed taking full advantage of the space to catch up on writing all that I’ve been wanting to share. There is no Wifi at the farm – but luckily, I have just enough power with my hotspot to upload a new blog post each time.
The farm encompasses 52 acres of land in total – it is incredibly peaceful here. Just about a 5-minute walk from the main road, it’s a true oasis among the often loud and bustling streets of India. Very rarely can you hear the carryover of noise from the local village as it is more the parrots and seemingly hundreds of other birds chit-chatting, the farm dogs playing, and numerous pollinators buzzing/flying about in the background.
We also hear the call to prayer from two neighboring mosques each day. The farm is located in Ramgargh Village, which is home to people of both Hindu and Muslim faiths. The calls can go on for hours at a time! It’s a very new experience for most of the guests and volunteers staying here.
The days are just now starting to reach hotter temperatures. Apparently, the transition into Summer months often starts following Holi (on March 8th). The rhythm of the two main seasons here are the cold and dry season called Rabi (November-May) and the hot followed by a rainy season called Kharif (June-October).
Facilities & Accommodations
There is a mixture of dorm rooms (with 4-6 beds in each), double and private rooms in which guest and volunteers live. The staff members have separate independent living quarters – some with private kitchens as well. There is also a seed bank, soil laboratory, library, lecture hall, kitchen & dining hall, main office and outdoor gazebo.
All buildings are constructed with natural materials – mud and cow dung plaster walls to grass and terra cotta roofed huts, using largely local materials and all ecological principles. The buildings are great at staying cool during the heat of the day and warm in the nights. The rooms are simple and the beds are very firm. There is such clear energy here and I sleep SO soundly at night.
Both Western- and Indian-style toilets are spread about. There is one solar-heated tap with water available for hot showers as well – thank goodness! So, we fill up a tin bucket with hot water and carry it to a nearby shower stall for use with a small tin cup that we use to scoop the water out and pour over ourselves. I’ve become very used to showering like this now – and love realizing how little water we truly need to shower. I easily wash my body and shampoo my hair and still have leftover water in the buckets we use.
Kitchen & Food
Nearly everything we eat is grown here on the farm – and what isn’t is sourced from farms in Navdanya’s network. All meals are vegetarian and include an expansive variety of grains, legumes, seasonal vegetables and fruits. The food is absolutely delicious and feels so nourishing. Drinking water and all the water used in the kitchen is sourced from an underground well and is safe for us foreigners.
Daily Schedule
Breakfast is from 8-9am every day. 9-10am is cleaning of the common areas where needed. At 10am we start work on the farm – weeding, harvesting, transplanting – until about 12:30pm, with a 30min chai break at 11am. Lunch is from 1-2pm and we have a free period from 2-3pm. Then we either return to the farm for more work or have an afternoon learning/teaching session. We often wrap up any work or sessions by 5:30pm. And then have free time until dinner around 7:30pm.
The farm offers educational courses and farmer trainings that run throughout the year. Visitors are often coming through for a half day to enjoy lunch and a farm tour, or to stay for a night or two. Courses can run from a few days to a whole week with anywhere from 10-20 participants that visit and stay at the farm during these times. Bijaks can participate in these courses, so our schedule adapts when courses are running.
There is a very strong feeling of community here —definitely set by the staff who live here, it’s adopted by all who arrive and thus easy to settle and feel immediately at home.
Many have expressed that one of the harder aspects about the life on the farm here is how many goodbyes are had. With a steady flow of people coming and going, as well as Bijaks who stay for different periods of time, I’ve experienced a taste of it in just being here for two weeks. It’s a beautiful and bittersweet mesh of getting to connect with such a vast network of like-minded people, while having to say goodbye after short periods of time together and not knowing when you may see them again. But I’m continuing to embrace it all and trust that these connections will circle back in the exact ways they are meant to.
The overall flow of the farm is quite chill. It seems that work is starting to pick up with more strenuous farm tasks presenting themselves. We are encouraged to look out for ourselves – take rest when needed or ask for more work if desired.
