farm life

It’s hard to believe that we have left the farm, said goodbye to all the amazing people – friends – and are now working our way northward. We came to the farm for a two week stay; we didn’t leave for over 3 weeks (and not until after we made our friend who was visiting us come to the farm first).

Staying on the farm meant hot days (40C), getting very dirty, working very hard, eating on a concrete floor, living and working with people who know either very little or no English, having just about the same food everyday, getting cuts on our hands, hand-washing our clothes, and for me, it meant the longest stretch of time I’ve ever gone without having any meat.

But we didn’t want to leave, and this morning, it was hard to say goodbye. Because the farm also meant so much more. It meant learning what truly hard work can be. How locals live. How they eat and what they eat. How to communicate. Sharing clothes and laughs and so many mangoes. Learning some of the local language. The most incredible nights, a mix of perfect temperature, glorious breeze and star-filled skies. Getting dressed up to go to “the city,” which is the sleepy town of Mandvi, where rIAm did her best to help boost the local handicraft economy while I kept some local barbers in business with some most excellent shaves (Rs 15 = $0.45US).

And yet the time meant so much more. The working, while at times tiring and difficult, was so rewarding. And the relationships – the people – are some of the most amazing we’ve ever met.

Vijay is the owner, and he’s incredibly gracious and enjoyable, but he lives in the village (Rayan), not on the farm itself. So most of our time is spent with Hari (farm manager), Vanita (cook, worker, Hari’s wife), Dhammaindra (oldest son of Hari & Vanita), Jayesh (middle son), Chetan (youngest son), Kaki (”auntie,” Hari’s 80 year-old mother), and assorted farm employees. Hari’s whole family lives on the farm, so naturally we spend a lot of time with them. Nobody except Vijay speaks fluent English, although the boys (ages 14, 12, 10) know a decent bit of English (progressively knowing more with their ages) and both Hari and Vanita know some words.

For example, after cutting a very ripe mango, Hari announced it was time for “mango eating.” Vanita suggested after dinner one night that we come to their room for “tv looking.” And when renee noticed some dogs playing, Hari proudly announced “dog loving.”

So we have fun communicating.

The food is spectacular; rIAm’s dream come true of a diet, more or less. It’s an entirely vegetarian farm (also no alcohol or smoking), but not vegan, and there is always lots of milk around. Each morning we have tea (chai; tea with lots of milk and sugar) and chapatti, a flat bread made with wheat, water and oil. Lunch is some sort of “sab-zee,” which is vegetables cooked in a sauce with lots of spices. Always flavorful and interesting, and served with (eaten with!) chapatti. Dinner is a risotto-like concoction, a variant of “kitch-a-ree” which is rice and lentils. Some days it isn’t really kitch-a-ree, but it’s very similar as it’s still rice based, but not perhaps with lentils. At each meal there is always buttermilk available, which is cool and fairly sour (you can add salt if you like) and at dinner there is always fresh warm milk with sugar. Either at a meal or as a snack during the day there is usually fruit from the garden, perhaps watermelon or canteloupe, often cucumbers. And we can regularly count on mangoes, which are in season, although not growing on the farm itself. Add some crusty bread and olive oil and rIAm would be in heaven. Not that it crossed her mind to complain.

rIAm made fast friends with Vanita, as they learn each other’s language and prepare meals, clean dishes and do laundry (hand washing). They also will head out to join the women workers most days.

The farm has two main crops, aloe vera and fresh dates. We are just before date season, so we can see them getting ready on the trees. But aloe can be harvested whenever there is an order, which there was twice while we stayed. In the morning we cut aloe and filled up a tractor trailer, then bring it in for extensive washing, filleting, “juicing,” boiling and then rapid cooling. The next day it is filtered and bottled for use. Some aloe vera liquid goes for making soaps, creams, etc while a further purified version goes for making beverages, both medicinal and juice.

For rIAm, bonding with Vanita and the women workers took her energies, as she did her best to communicate, show photos, and learn names. She also paid a lot of attention to Kaki, who spoke zero English whatsoever, but, as it turned out, developed an enormous affection for Meena (aka rIAm; she never grasped the right name, and by the time we figured out what she meant by Meena, it was too late and too great to try or want to change anything). But those are rIAm’s stories, and hers to tell, so as Jayesh would say, “telling stories yes, but now not.”

I can tell you that I approached the bonding with the male workers carefully. They work hard and have their way of doing things, and I didn’t want to step on toes or presume to know a better way. Slowly, after about a week, they saw how I could work, liked what they saw, and spent more and more time trying to talk with me. I realized that Atul knew a lot more English than he let on, as did Vesuba. Imran, the young pup of the group, knew very little, but was enormously curious and interested in me. Rajaa always had a crazy look on his face and knew no English, but we tended to communicate through what seemed to be howls and grunts.

It was perhaps with Atul I forged the best bond. A consistent task while on the farm was covering the many fresh dates with newspaper and plastic to protect them from the upcoming strong rains. These sweet and juicy fruits bring a lot of money into the farm, and so they go to great effort to protect their fruit. Eventually I started working with Atul, helping him cover the large bunches. He’d handle getting the plastic ready; I’d handle the paper. He’d get up high in the tree and start putting the paper and then the plastic over the dates. I’d be underneath, pulling them down and around. Then he’d secure one side, me the other. After an afternoon and the next morning like this, Imran seemed to complain.

It would seem that he was jealous. He wanted to work with me. Nevermind that he had his chance, but now he saw how it could be. But Atul wanted nothing of it. He said no, he was still going to work with me. OK, in all fairness, I’m totally speculating as to how the conversation went, but none of it was in English. But when it was done, Atul turned to me and said something kind of like this: “Imran say no working [with] him. I say working me. [Pointing his hand back and forth between us he continues] Good working, enjoy.”

By the end Atul was calling me his good friend and brother (which isn’t so uncommon, but he wasn’t saying it at the beginning). I was feeling the bond as well, and also still trying to comprehend how he and his wife, Lakshmi, also a farm worker, raise their 5 kids on a combined income of no more than $4US/day (I know Atul gets Rs. 80 for one day of work – work is 7 days/week, but you are free to take a day off when you need it, but of course you don’t get paid).

We have likely not fully wrapped our minds around the farm or its people yet, and we both know that it has captured our hearts in a big way. These people are all incredible in their different ways, and living a full and rich life that is so different than what we know in the USA or Canada. There is no way that the story of the farm is fully or properly captured in this post, and yet I feel compelled to start telling the story, however clumsy or incomplete it may be.

But we have no qualms calling this the most amazing cultural experience of our lives, and we have every intention of taking some of what we’ve learned and incorporating it into our North American lives. Whether it is using soil as grit to clean dishes, making a “sab-zee” for a meal or farting freely during dinner, there are some wonderful aspects to this life.

Of course, we’ll also be very, very happy to get back to a laundry machine and refrigeration.

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Hopefully you are all enjoying the onset of summer. It’s hard for us to believe the weather may (finally) be better in Toronto & Chicago than where we are traveling; in our minds, it’s still cold and snowy back home! We’ve certainly gotten more used to the hot weather, as we tolerate days that reach 40 C (best not to think about the F conversion!). But even our jaws dropped when we saw Delhi temperatures earlier this week (8-11 June) were 45, 46, 47, 48C.