Many of us are familiar with alternatives to the refrigerator like the Zeer Pot or Mitti Cool. A month ago, we decided to make a Zeer Fridge from a couple of pots lying outside.  Took the bigger pot, filled some sand at the bottom and sides (the trick it to wet the sand before filling it so it stays glued), slid in the smaller pot, threw in some veggies and covered with a wet towel. That’s it!

Of course, I need to sprinkle water on the sand and top once in the morning and afternoon.  Even with just one inch sand layer we have, the veggies stay fresh for  4 to 5 days. So do green chillies, lemon ginger and curry leaves. We haven’t tried out fruits – sensitive ones like melons should be interesting.   We don’t have the need to store milk but our extra yoghurt is happy inside the pot and doesn’t turn sour for a day or two.

After researching on green buildings for a while, we had decided to check out COSTFORD, an institute founded by the Gandhian architect, Laurie Baker in Trivandrum, Kerala. Sajan, the chief architect, looked at me and said, “I was expecting someone who is around 50 years”. But he quickly warmed up to our story and said his reasons to stick with a non-profit though he could make much more money with his own practice were pretty much the same as ours. He then sent me to the Center for Developmental Studies (CDS) designed and built by Laurie Baker to look at its architecture.

I went around CDS and heard many stories about Laurie Baker. A civil engineer accompanied me around and explained to me their method, purpose, time, costing etc which are lucidly captured in this interesting hand-written manifesto by Laurie Baker. 

Nisha mixing limestone. See more pictures >

We were introduced to Subash Palekar’s Zero Budget Farming (which is a catchy name for Natural Farming) by friends at Siruthuli, a local eco non-profit,. In this, we found a ready-to-walk bridge between Fukuoka’s spirit, Permaculture  guidelines and the specific needs of our farm.  Subash  Palekar has documented his intensive experiments over a span of 8 years in a series of books.  And we really like his definition of Natural Farming which is ‘to use or activate that which is already in natural existence”.

The soil was dry and hard from grazing, the motor attached to the bore well that irrigates the farm doesn’t work (someone stole the wire that powers the motor!), the first phase of south-west monsoon had failed and there is a scarcity for farm laborers. So most local farmers advised us against multi-cropping that natural farming embraces. We thought we’ll wait for some rain.

One of our local friends graciously offered his house on a plantain farm for free until we finish building our house (gift-economy at work!). When he told us that some things need fixing, we didn’t take him that seriously.

We started the process of move-in and thus began a series of fixer upper tasks : fixing a leaking roof, covering the windows with mosquito nets, cleaning a ton of dust, changing a wash basin, repainting the kitchen, fixing the ceiling fan that thinks it’s a helicopter,  installing a bamboo  gate to prevent Aum from running into  the backyard well, changing light bulbs of course and so on. Our friend pitched in with all he can just to get us going.