பரி பனை (Pari Panai)

We did it! We made the move a month ago to the land!

All those things that were supposed to happen based on my previous post?  You know the saying, 'the best laid plans..'? Well, I'm more inclined to go with Terry Pratchett's take (once again) who summed it up best by saying,

"A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost."

And here's what happened,

Our horses

Rey nicely settled in Gurgaon thanks to the several centuries it took our mason to build our home and stable on the land which led to us bringing home our cheeky, existential angst inducing, heart-exploding bundles of joy and meaning to our lives, Django and Koko! Both of them are from the Madras Race Course stables where horses are sold every time someone sneezes in the flower market in Koyambedu.

We were to bring home Koko first but as Fate would have it, or as the owner/broker/trainer cycle of current pass was happening, we were told Koko wasn't for sale. The first time you saw Koko you noticed how big her heart was. She was the most gentle, patient and surprisingly fluffy horse we'd ever seen. To be told she wasn't for sale after paying an advance was quite as excruciating as jamming one's fingers in the car door. Repeatedly. While visiting the stables for the 57th time in the hopes of Koko being up for sale again, we met a very friendly gelding with a white shooting star on his head who blew into our ears and let us pat him and feel wonderful doing this. We were told his legs were bad, what were we thinking, but the only conformation we cared about was one of his heart (We're all allowed to be sentimentally mushy about our horses) :D

We were done waiting for the house and stable to be built on the land, so brought home Django to Mani's family's home where it was perfectly normal to bring home a horse in the middle of the night and pitch a stable in the newly built car shed.

A month after we brought Django home, we were told that Koko was for sale again. Only this time she was a horse driven to mind-numbing boredom with a maggot-infected leg, having been inside that stable of hers, all day, everyday, the past month. On a normal day, we would have refused bringing home a horse with such a checklist of problems. We haven't had a normal day since 1992.

Django and Koko

Moving to the land

With both Django and Koko at Mani's place and our move to the land happening 'in two weeks' since January, we finally made it first week of March thanks to the threat of no horse float for another month and no 'nalla naal' (*suspiciously auspicious day) for another month and ended up with two mats, some pillows, our dogs and our horses and came to our home on the land (still unfinished) with one bulb and no plumbing but with a stable and a roof overlooked by a galaxy of stars over our heads.

It felt fantastic to finally wake up to the sunrise over our farm. What a morning!

Our first sunrise at the farm

A few days later, we'd had our house warming ceremony that was more global than house this summer.

Since then, the following are the updates on the farm over the month of March with half of a half full well of water next to a quarry blasting thunder (no, not Imagine Dragons) and dynamite every evening.

Saplings we planted

We've planted fruit saplings like mango, chickoo, sweet lime, lemon, pomegranate, guava and papaya. Along with them, flower shrubs like hibiscus and magnolia. As border crops we've planted sesbania, glyricidia and oleander. The single herb we've planted so far is the curry tree. For all of these saplings we've used a layer of hay to cover the soil around to help mulch and retain moisture.

Sweet lime sapling

Mango saplings

Guava, pomegranate and curry tree saplings

Chickoo and hibiscus saplings

Oleander sapling

Gliricidia saplings

The structures we built and are setting up

One of the first orders of business once we moved to the land was to set up the stables properly and the paddock up. With the help of Mani's uncle's assistant, Muthiah, the paddock got done in one day. Without the help of Mani's uncle's assistant, Muthiah, the round pen took close to ten days! We're learning very quickly first hand how much goes into the physical labour of getting a farm up and running.

Muthiah helping us build the paddock

The completed paddock

The raised bed

The stables

The round pen

Why பரி பனை (Pari Panai) ?

We decided on the name பரி பனை (Pari Panai) to highlight what we consider essential to our land and our lives, horses (பரி-pari) and Palmyra palm (பனை-panai) - which most present day farmers in Tamil Nadu look upon as 'useless' in the current context of farming. We hope to change that narrative in the coming years to make farming an inclusive space for diversity of all kinds, from plants, insects, animals to people.

The logo of our farm sketched by Mani