Sowing Native seeds in the young minds: Part Five

Looking for the Harvests

Chaithanya at some serious work.........

Days were becoming hectic as the sequence of visits to the schools was getting overlapped. While some school gardens had to undergo re-sowing, some had already had juvenile plants asking for supplements to bloom and protection from unknown pests. Organic soil supplements and pest-repellent had be carried and administered. The two dozen schools that we addressed in this project were all so sparsely distributed and we could cover fewer gardens per day. Lecturing, demonstrations of various kinds and photo-documenting needed extra hands in the team. Dozens of millet were in full bloom and ripe on their stalks and were to be photographed before they were harvested. We had Chaithanya, a seventh standard student from Mysore who had come to stay on the campus for a few days. We asked him to do some photography for us. Slinging the camera to his neck allowed us to be in our job while he explored his potentials happily with his camera. Some of the photographs used in this this article are taken by him.

The assessing team visiting a Kitchen Garden

Visiting some of the schools of MM Hills and Ponnachi Panchayath involved phenomenal drives. The meandering road through the scrubby forest while going up Mahadeshwara hills was enthralling. In less than a few kilometers the scorching weather would surprisingly get transformed into a pleasant setting. At mid way to the top, a deviation to the left would take you through less inhabited road to Ponnachi. As you cross over a couple of deep valleys you feel like travelling across time. The area is also known for its high incidence of elephant movement. This used to be a mining capital for black granite until the eighties, when the government of Karnataka imposed a total ban on all quarrying activities in the district. You have to pass through a few defaced-faced hillocks to get a flatter and undulating landscape housing the villages of Ponachi.

Oh! Whats wrong with this garden?

The road to Tholasikere was notoriously adventurous. The approach roads were not attended in half a century! The population thrive a kind of detachment from the mainstream due to lack of roads, electric power and water supply even today. Since the declaration of these forests as critical Tiger habitat the Forest department is looking forward to relocate the villages to the MM Hills complex or else where. As a strategic stand they  wouldn't permit any form of developmental works like putting up a building or a road. The local population shattered by uncertainty grossly depended on the shanty vehicles that shuttled between MMHills and Nagalmalai,

A boy showing a healthy soft gourd

a shrine within the protected area. The ride was worse than any dirt-track event and strangely was undertaken by only one single brand of a pickup truck called Force plying between the destinations. There were about forty of them, all looking they were returning from the war front. Some didn't even have a number plate and nobody knew their ownership  but the drivers were all strictly below eighteen years of age! Just like the tourists and the luggage of the locals that ranged from a gas cylinder to monthly rations even we had to travel in the only available transport with no guarantee or insurance. Except for such exceptional cases most schools were motorable but the individual gardens in the backyards required climbing and trekking skills to reach.

Neelakanta of Kumbudaki village proud of his performance

 Children all over had tried out their best and the plants in best soils had rewarded. The household gardens on the mountains were more rewarding while the school Gardens in Marthally valley fared better harvest. Ingenuity of children seemed unfathomable and they had shown a wide ranging variety of improvisation in containing the soil. Their dedicated care of the plants had yielded tasty vegetables to their families and neighborhoods. The school gardens too provided ample vegetables to the mid-day meals.

The size of the radish was astounding

In a small hamlet called Kumbudki where the headmaster visited the school even during the Dasara holiday to water the plant had so many vegetables that the cook boiled the vegetables and the lentils in different consignments in the pressure cooker every day. On an average there was an addition of at least fifty kilos of vegetables to the mid day meals of every school. Out of the a thousand two hundred students addressed our staffs were able to visit some seven hundred and fifty house holds that had established a garden at home. The sum of all the harvests made from these households amounted to approximately six tones.  Two dozen children were able to grow more that 25 kilos of vegetables. The vegetables grown in the backyard included radish, bottle gourd, ridge gourd, pumpkin, ladies finger, cluster bean, drumstick and variety of lettuces. Where ever the germination had failed saplings of eggplants and tomato were distributed along with the seeds.

The cook in a school shows her
 pot full of vegetables 

 Those who were not able to take up kitchen gardening either had no space at home at or they stayed away from home. Some even complained about non availability of water and pests like monkeys, pigs and goats. In case of schools also the reasons were no different. As a traditional farmer does every little gardener had a collection of seeds from each crop. They had all kept up their promise of leaving one vegetable plant of each variety for the sake of seed collection. For us this was a greater harvest than all the vegetables grown by the community involved against all odds. The area has not seen proper rains in the past four years. During the current year the farmers never had an opportunity to undertake sowing upon the beds they had promptly ploughed in anticipation of the rains. While the parents had a miserable denial for agricultural this year their children had successfully harvested something for the pot for a few days in the year.

reusing 25 kg rice bags to grow vegetables

 -Manu K