Farmer's House

26/06/2026

20/06/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *21 June 2026*

*298th* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

An 11 year old girl crafted some beautiful bird houses in wood and we thought of putting them on the shelf to encourage her talent. Meanwhile, a bulbul abandoned her fibre-woven nest at the farm and we picked it up to display at the store.

The bird had no need for a house once her babies flew away. Her material, methods and results were impermanent and unpossesive. But the humans on the contrary thought that a house has to be a permanent architecture with an asset value.

Not only that we have grown unnatural, we even try imposing our ideas on nature.

The 298th weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

13/06/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *14 June 2026*

*297th* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

Last week, we wrote about the hanging bunches of Longan at the farm and how they might need a little more time to ripen. The Longans were sweet but the fruit was just a thin veneer of pulp yet. And we hoped to harvest at least some 200 kilos in 2 weeks.

Just within a week, everything changed. As the mango season closed, the birds invaded the Longan tree and decimated the entire crop, savouring the thin pulp and dropping almost every fruit to the ground, only half eaten.

The timing of Longan at the farm looked as if it fruited only to fill a food crisis gap for the birds in nature.

The 297th weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

06/06/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *7 June 2026*

*296th* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

The Longan bunches hang in plenty from the tall tree at the farm for the first time. It is the 7th year and so it is a seed grown native tree of the fruit. For years, it caused anxiety as it didn't fruit at all but this year, it bloomed big, suddenly.

The fruit pulp isn't thick yet but is already very sweet. And the birds that are bored of mangoes have now moved away from that and have begun their onslaught on Longan.

The fruits need a clear 2 weeks more for us to harvest. But if the birds are happy with the thin veneer of pulp, then we need to wait for another year before we lay our hands on Longan.

The 296th weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

30/05/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *31 May 2026*

*295th* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

As we watched over the last year, a million termites decided to build a cathedral mound at the farm in Gothic style. Termites don't often eat live plants and since they bring out deep-seated soil minerals to surface, that mud is life giving. And the cathedral also acts as an air conditioning chimney to its underground city of joy. And that accidental twig the termites included in the construct can one day be an edible dinner table by itself.

More importantly, a termite mound is never finished. It is endless and multi-generational, exactly like Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in looks, design and spirit. And it also evolves by stigmergy, a mechanism of decentralised coordination, rather than rigid planning.

For us at Padma Farms, it is an extraordinary monument of nature at work. It stands as a living testament to the maturity of a natural system, operating freely.

The 295th weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

23/05/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *24 May 2026*

*294th* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

Years ago, Dr Dinesh, the then Director of IIHR (ICAR) was campaigning to conserve Appe Midi Mangoes, as the best cultivars were facing existential threat. We shared his concern and toured the western ghats to collect the correct gene stock. Incidentally, IIHR established a field gene bank for the most threatened Appe midis, so that any possible force of extinction could be countered.

We asked IIHR early last year to give us 100 saplings of the best of Appe midi mango plants, so that we could find homes for them. This week, they gave us the first 10 stabilised - Dombesara Jeerige Appe Midi mango saplings, developed from their pure gene stock and epicotyl grafted over the disease resistant and climate resilient Nekkare cultivar.

Now, another arduous and expensive journey begins. Not easy to oppose nature when the almighty nature itself decides to give up.

The 294th weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

16/05/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *17 May 2026*

*293rd* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

Hass Avocado is believed to be the best nutritional powerhouse. Crossing between a Mexican and a Guatemalan cultivar, Rudolf Hass in 1926 turned around the Avocado market and Hass now sits at the head of the table. We have planted Hass repeatedly at Padma Farms , but they have yielded a slightly different looking variety, because every progeny of a hybrid is a genetic lottery at the end. But the desire to grow a true Californian Hass is inescapably gripping the mind.

The latest attempt is a seed smuggled into the country by a friend who came back from California. And we have carefully set it out for germination, hoping to grow a real Hass.

If it yields, it is after 5 years. That's too far from now. But natural farming is just the delight of the journey itself and it doesn't matter if we don't get to eat the fruits of our efforts in our own lifetime.

The 293rd weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

09/05/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *10 May 2026*

*292nd* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

The marshmallow looking false puffball mold, although an inch in size, is not multicellular. It is just one single cell amoeboid entity, with a million nucleii and cytoplasm. It is an amazing unicellular intelligence of nature that it can find food, search spaces and make decisions to rest and produce reproductive spores. It is one of the first eukaryotes that emerged on the planet over a billion years ago and has heen living the same life that it lived then. It is so beneficial to the natural farms because it feeds on decaying plant matter and it neither outcompetes anyone nor dominates an existence. Just a puffy and peaceful ancestor of ours that neither evolved nor degraded. But a single cell amoeboid wonder, that's visible on the plants this season, connecting our long past to the present nature.

The 292nd weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

02/05/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *3 May 2026*

*291st* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

Our bird expert friend Sahana mader her quarterly survey of birds at Padma Farms this week and found 56 species on a single morning, bringing the total to about 115 bird species on the landscape. And she watched how this Black-headed Cuckooshrike harvested spider silk from cobwebs to use as a binding agent for the nest he is building somewhere high up the tree. Spider silk is stronger than steel at that dimension. And Cuckooshrike is more imaginative than an architect at this act.

In appreciation of this ingenuity, all that we could do is offer a variety of fruits to the bird and its brood in this season. Well, did we? Naw. The trees and the farm nature have done it while we claim the credit for conservation.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S330147452

The 291st weekly market is tomorrow at 9.

25/04/2026

Farmer's House
1A, 13th Cross
Kalidasa Road
VV Mohalla, Mysore

Sunday, *26 April 2026*

*290th* Organic Farmers' Market

Venue: Farmer's House
Time: 9 AM to 12 Noon

One lone apple formed at the top edge of one of our four Kashmir apple plants. Quite daring indeed. The birds that recalled seeing the exotic fruit during their migration through a distant land, scratched the skin with their claws and marked the ownership. Probably the critters laid eggs beneath it and waited for their caterpillars to emerge and eat, but we didn't see that yet. We watched the fruit everyday and built castles in the air that we could snack on Kashmir apples grown on our own tropical soil.

But the fruit disappeared without a trace. That deep cost of survival was bound to happen for any outstanding head. We don't want to know who ate it. Maybe the squirrel that we didn't factor in. But we are happy that a plant of a faraway land does fruit here too and the immigrant will eventually thrive. Time and nature make everything possible.

The 290th weekly market is tomorrow at 9.