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The rishis looked upon the soil as a ‘mother’. Ploughing was forbidden because many of them believed that the plough, would damage the soil and turn it into sand. The rishis considered fruit, tubers and milk the most appropriate diet for humans. Rice, barley and millet were grown in small quantities, and used as offerings to the sacrificial fire. Leftovers were considered consecrated food – prasad – and eaten as such. When there was a choice, uncultivated and wild grain and vegetables were preferred to the cultivated ones. Cows were raised with great care and love, and extensive grazing lands were provided to them by strictly and deliberately limiting cultivated areas.

The philosophy of Rishi Kethi and its guiding principles suited well to our requirements and thus we started implementing these principles, one-by-one. As a first step at WNF, we started making trenches to put our mulching materials and harvest water. We set up drip lines to conserve water as much as possible. We stopped using chemical fertilisers and poisons. Some plants protested mildly, but then accepted the change. There were lot of resistance from many people, both within the farm as well as from outside visitors to our farm. They were sceptical by our approach to changing the way of farming and stopping the conventional methods of farming like tilling etc., They felt that everything looks good on paper and theory and when it comes to practicality it would not work and we are only wasting our precious money, time and energy. In spite of such comments we were confident and we were prepared to take the risk and continued our journey boldly.

After gaining some confidence in natural farming, we moved to the next level by devoting a portion of our farm, which was least productive land, to absolutely no-till treatment. To our utter amazement, it began to recover its health from the very first year. Two years later, we extended our no-till area to almost 50 acres of our farm land at WNF.

We did suffer minor difficulties such as birds picking the seeds, poor germination, tough weeds, all sorts of diseases and pests and unfavourable weather. Entirely through trial and error, in three years, we had achieved the following. The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides was totally banned on our land. Some of the experiments we tried failed and some worked well. After many such mistakes/experiments our production slowly started to stabilize and the chemicals were fully replaced by organic matter.

We started making suitable amends in our practices. We started innovating as per the needs at the ground level and they proved to be successful in both technical and economic terms. Most important of them all was we were pleased to see vast improvements in the health and fertility of our soil, which increased our confidence a lot.

Three years later all our land improved; and this could easily be judged from the lush, green health of the crops; the type of natural vegetation co-existing with it; the return of earth- worms; and the spongy texture of the topsoil due to accumulation of humus. We still had to work on the weeds, “kans” considered the most persistent of weeds in our area, was difficult to manage initially. But over time it reduced quite a bit from what it used to be when we started “Natural Farming” 3 years ago.
We started to look at the brighter side of the weeds, instead of finding it as a threat. We began to understand that the main function of weeds, created by nature was to check soil erosion naturally. We started letting some weeds stay as ground cover, by leaving roots of the harvested plants in place and by returning available stalks and straw to the soil. We were both

feeding it and providing work and sustenance to the insects and micro-organisms that build natural fertility into the soil.

In the year 2016, we set up our own “Vision”, “Mission”, “Goals” and “Founding Principles” for our own-selves and we are continuing with our heads held high in our maiden journey.