Navnirman Nyas- Organic farm outside Pune

The day before yesterday I was able to visit another organic farm 2 hours outside of Pune.  Located in a small village of Pargaon.  After a bit of a stretch of a long twisted dirt road, and a couple of hold ups due to sugar cane loadings, we made it!

We were greeted by a wonderful staff, and the owner of the farm, Vasudha Sardar.  A wonderful vibrant lady dedicated to nutritious foods and healthy soils.  Her operation has been running for about 4 years, but the farm has been in her family for most likely generations.  She sells her organic produce to Pune, 5 days a week, here is a link to the website,

http://sendriyasetu.org/contact.html

She is also very keen on having more visitors, a group of 10 or so people she would be very happy to show them the farm and her operations.  

From what I saw it looked like she had about 20 cows.  She had native breeds as well as water buffalo's.  Each cow had a name, and I had the chance to see what they fed them, on the days that the rain inundated their fields, they were being fed bright green chopped up leafy vegetables along with some other cut veggies! The cows absolutely loved this stuff, I don't blame them!  I was happy to see them getting such wonderful fresh stuff to eat.  

She used both their urine and feces in different mixtures along with a few ground pulses as well as jaggery.  These mixtures would then go to support the organic operations.  

Her fields had a nice variety of plant species.  No monocultures from what I could see.  She mixed chikoo trees with squashes, marigolds and other vegetables.  She also sells banana, guava and papaya.  I had the opportunity to taste one of her papaya's and it was absolutely fabulous!  From the outside, it didn't look like a typical papaya which we are used to picking out from the fruit wala's.  The papaya I ate was actually green, yet inside it was perfectly ripe, I even saved the seeds.. maybe I can plant something with them??  

We bought as much produce as we had spare bags in our cars, she also gifted us an entire bowl of fresh corn!  Amazing corn!  It was so juicy and flavorful.  Once you go organic, it's difficult to turn back.  The quality is readily felt in the taste!