A fair amount of date jugglery and discussions go into planning each farm visit.
First, we need to figure out if there is a need for us to be there on a specific day. For instance, we just had to be there on the day we had the government survey or the day we had a meeting with the electricity guys or a walkabout with the water diviner or a negotiation with the sarpanch who constructed our toilet and toolshed. Also on the day the village called for a meeting to decide if we could run our electric poles through the village!! These days are set in stone and one if not all of us are definitely at the farm to oversee and supervise these events.
Occasionally, there is a time-sensitive harvest that sends us hurtling down to the farm, especially when we were growing oyster mushrooms. These needed to be harvested and refrigerated as soon as they were ready, so at least one of us would dash in for collection duty as soon as we got a call from the farm. But, these times are now infrequent as we have temporarily put our experiments with oyster mushrooms on hold. And, our other crops are not as time-critical for harvest and collection.
Most of the time though, Bandra Rose, Mr Stonethrower and I try to work around and negotiate our professional and social commitments so we can visit the farm together. At a practical level, this makes sense because it’s easier to take decisions on the spot, but, more than that, it’s because we enjoy the chatter and conversation for the six odd hours, we spend in the car on each farm visit. And, syncing our schedules is not as complicated as it sounds because we are at the farm together at least twice a month, if not three times.
In early March our stars aligned on Tuesday, 7th March, and we drove off to the farm at the crack of dawn. Our friend, Arch Angel, joined us enroute, so we were a happy car of four. It was a holiday on account of Holi (the Indian festival of colour), and we were delighted to see empty roads with absolutely no trucks. Slow-moving trucks in the wrong lane are the bane of our weekly drive. We reached the unmarked turn-off to get onto the unnamed road that leads to the farm in record time, and, we were all in the best of moods.
A short while later we saw a few young boys all bright with Holi colours blocking the narrow road with a bamboo stick. We pulled to a stop wondering what to do next. The boys were equally flummoxed as they assumed we knew why we had been stopped. Seconds ticked by as I tried to ask them what they wanted, till an older onlooker told us they wanted their Holi Pos (something akin to a Holi Tax) to let us pass. If we didn’t give them money, they would (threaten to) throw coloured powder at us!! We gave them some money (substantially more than they expected!!) and they gleefully withdrew the bamboo and waited for the next vehicle.
We laughed happily at this sweet prank, but before we could say Holi Cow, there was another bunch of boys blocking our path! Now that we knew the drill, we dished out the money and were happily waved through. A little ahead we could see another small gaggle of boys and quickly decided to switch our contributions to smaller denominations. This too was gladly accepted and off we drove again. On our 8 km drive on the unnamed road to our farm, we were stopped no fewer than 9 times! Hilarious and delightful. Do look at the picture of the little boys blocking our path! These were the tiniest tots.
At the farm, more joy awaited us as the Imp and his lovely wife were busy harvesting red tomatoes and watermelon. They had already picked a whole basket of ripe tomatoes and after a quick discussion put us to work gathering up the tomatoes that were still orange as they would ripen off the vine within a few days. We picked and picked till we filled another basket before deciding to leave the rest of the tomatoes for another day.
Next up were the watermelons. We took turns walking around the patch and knocking on each watermelon to figure out which sounded ripe and ready. And, as an aside, did you know that watermelons are very cool to the touch when they are on the vine? I didn’t know this and was delighted as I walked under the blazing sun laying my palm on one cool watermelon after another. And, as is my wont, I ran a search on this as soon as I got home, and this is what I learnt. Firstly, a watermelon is roughly spherical, and a sphere has a low surface area for its volume. For the melon to heat up, the sun must shine on its surface, and so in this situation, there’s not much surface compared to the volume of the watermelon. Also, watermelons contain a lot of water, which has a high ‘specific heat’ capacity and therefore does not heat up easily.
The cool watermelons and baskets of tomatoes were loaded into the trunk of the farm car along with cashew nuts, chilli, aubergine and Malabar cucumbers. Quite the Holi Harvest!
The Holi Pos story was repeated on our way back and while we indulged a few, we waved off the rest saying we’d already paid the tax on the way in. It was all in good fun, sweet and innocent.
A fabulous day at the farm and a Happy Holi indeed! We’ll be back at the farm every Holi for the light traffic, the entertaining Holi Pos and of course the harvest in the vibrant colours of Holi!
