Posts in category "sustainable-living" - page 2
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Group Farming Option
In a previous post I mentioned that there were several options to own a farm. One of them being a managed farm. If you read that post you know why we rejected it. The other option was to go with a few like minded friends and buy a large farm where everyone can take care of it. A similar concept is group farming or community farming. Here too, a bunch of like minded unrelated people can come together, buy a farm and take care of it together. Although we were not too keen on this kind of arrangement, we tried it out. What happened next is coming up.
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Is Managed Farmland A Good Idea?
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you already know that we purchased a farmland a few months ago. I explained how we decided to go with a farm within 2-4 hours from Bangalore in a previous post. As we started our search for a farm, we figured out we could go several different ways. I explain one such method of owning a farm in this post, which is known as managed farmland. We did not go this route in the end but I just want to explain our thought process as we embarked on this journey of doing organic farming.
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Time To Take A Decision
In one of the previous posts I explained how we hoped we might buy a farm along with a friend near Thirthahalli. Thanks to COVID-19 we could not execute the plan. Whether that is good or bad we are not sure. But that trip and those discussions got us more interested in starting an organic farm of our own. We were still not clear on many aspects though. Should we go for a place that is close to where we currently live so we can frequently travel to the place and take care of it until we are ready to move. Or should we buy something far away leave it without developing it until we are ready to move. This post is all about how we made that decision.
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An Unexpected Encounter
It was January 2020 when we made an unexpected trip to Thirthahalli, a beautiful remote village in Karnataka. One of our newly made friends was born and brought up in Thirthahalli and they are planning to purchase a farmland near there. They invited us to visit their house for a fun trip and join them in their search for a farm. At this point in time, we were not even prepared to purchase a farm. We tagged along because our friends were on the search and we thought we can get some experience of the process if we ever want to go that route. But how did we meet these folks and what led us to believe we could do farming?
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Our First Step Towards True Retirement - Part 2
Happy new year everyone! I want to continue where I left off in my previous post, so if you haven’t read that, I suggest you head over there first to get some context. The year was 2022, and like I mentioned in the previous post, we were thinking about farm life and were not sure if we can adapt to it after living in the city for such a long time. Since a few of our unschooling friends were living on farms far away from the city we thought it would be a good idea to visit their farm and see how they live and take care of their daily activities in such remote places. It will help us answer some long standing questions.
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Our First Step Towards True Retirement - Part 1
If you have been paying attention to the last few posts, you know that we are cutting down our sustainability efforts here at home. We first stopped rain water harvesting. Then slowly started to reduce our organic gardening footprint. None of these decisions were taken on a whim. They were deliberate and well thought out. While I mentioned some of the reasons for slowing down the projects, one reason which I did not mention was that we were not finding enough time. Yes I know, it sounds strange coming from a person who (and his better half) have completely retired and have not worked for money for more than 5 years. Yet, here we are. We finally realized our long-held dream of becoming owners of a farm and that kept us busy.
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Terrace Gardening Update
There are three places where we have been doing organic gardening. One on either sides of the house, two on the terrace and three outside of our compound wall. I already gave an update on the garden on either sides of the house. Since I’d like to keep you guys up to date, in this post I am giving an update on the terrace garden and the garden that is outside. Now for the bad news. We recently stopped doing the terrace gardening. There are a few reasons which I will get to in a minute. Meanwhile, our outside garden is still doing fine, but not to the level we want.
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Rain Water Harvesting Update
A long time ago, soon after I retired we build a DIY rain water harvesting at our place. We even made some upgrades along the way. Since it rains a lot here in Bangalore (or I should say used to rain a lot), we enjoyed a few good years of rain water harvest. For those of you who don’t know, there is huge water shortage here in Bangalore and any water we can save is extremely helpful. We generally use about 22 tankers of water in a year. But since setting up the rain water harvesting, it has reduced to almost half. Thus not only saving money but also water.
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Organic Gardening Update
As we progress in life, things come and go. We start out with a plan and later it may fail or we stop executing it for some reason. Take the most common failed plans that most people complain about – exercise. When the new year rolls in some of us plan to exercise routinely and stay fit. Eventually, due to various reasons, some stop doing it. There were several plans I made after retirement, and some of them have either failed or we stopped them intentionally. One such plan was organic gardening. Just after retiring, we started to grow a small vegetable garden in the open space on the sides of our house inside our compound. I even built and programmed an automated drip irrigation system so we don’t have to worry about watering. But we stopped growing vegetables on the sides. So what happened?
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Solar System Comparison with MKBHD
Some of you may already know MKBHD, a popular youtuber in the tech world. He recently posted a video about the going completely solar and not having to pay an electricity bill for a whole year. It is a very well made video which explains how the solar panel system works with batteries (off grid) and with net metering (on grid). Although I don’t have net metering and I am not completely off grid, so mine is a hybrid approach. Still, if you watch the video it will help you understand how my setup works (sort of). My setup is closer to the hybrid system explained in another video. Anyway, I wanted to compare my puny setup with MKBHD’s setup and see how I compare. So here goes.
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