End of the chickoo crop!

Its the end of the chickoo season!

Picked and put among the leaves!

We have two types of chickoos planted. One which are round and are called Cricket Ball and one which is oval and are called -- well -- Oval!! This year the crop was bigger and better and I am still selling them off my group to happy buyers. So, why do I insist the chickoos are put on the ground?? Because they release a sap when picked and that is sticky. So we pick and leave them on the ground to let the sap soak into the soil, then only do I rub it on the dry leaves and put into the bag.

Apples are ripening on the trees.

Just two years ago a Colonel friend on my gardening group sent me a package of 12 bare root apple trees from J and K! .They have taken to Hoskote and a year and flowering and fruiting happily  to our great joy. Ofcourse we are watering them well and Rajanna has fed them chicken waste which stinks but is great for the trees. There are different varieties of apples including a strange shaped one like the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs story.

Bunches of them everywhere!

I picked one and took a bite! Its delicious and just the kind that I like. Not too sweet and a bit tart. Both of us crunched our way through a couple, absolutely thrilled that they taste so good. My worry is that no one must rob them during the week.

Avocados after more than a decade.

We planted a few of the avacados that Dad had germinated of the  Hayes road trees. They have grown well and probably one fruited only once.  Then I was told by my Goa gardening group that there are not enough bees and so cross pollination is not happening. They even explained what I must do manually to pollinate the flowers. Over spraying of pesticide has caused mass deaths of bees, but lucky for us the farmers had decided to inter-crop the beans with roses and so the bees were back and to our immense joy baby fruit began to appear.

Watch and hope they grow!

I must buy some tankers of chicken waste water to help them grow. The water has blood and bits of skin which the plants love and thrive on. Very sad that Dad and Mum are not here to see the farm. They saw it when it was barren. Now its a paradise which they would have loved.

Time to hang the fruit fly lures!

Mango time!

 Fixing and sealing the fruit fly lures for the mango trees!

We are organic farmers and to our luck the buyers of my farm are are still getting the paper work organised, so we have the joy of the farm still in our hands. Since we are organic farmers, a friend sent us fruit fly lures from Goa which are more than 10 times cheaper than Amazon. So on Sunday we set up 20 lures  in the farm and hung them up across the 25 Mallika and Raspuri trees.

 This is last years lure!

It is truly amazing how many hundred male flies get caught and are thrown out by the lures. These lures prevent the flies from laying their eggs in our pea sized mangoes which are already growing on the trees. Since we do not spray the trees with chemicals, this is the organic method to prevent our crop from becoming infested by the maggots of the flies.

Baby avocados have appeared.
 This year there is much joy in the farm as the avocados have flowered after 10 years. The trees were big and tall. Four of them, but sadly they gave fruit just once. Reading up on the issue the reason was simple - the flowers would come and fall off. BUT they were not pollinated as we did not have enough bees. The farmers of the bean and brinjal fields surrounding us were pumping pesticides to keep their crops safe which killed the bees and butterflies as well. This year they are growing flowers so we are in luck. The bees are back and the cold winter snap helped.

Chickoos are harvested and lie on the ground so the sap pours out into the soil.

Hundreds of chickoos too this year which I have sold on whatssapp in a matter of minutes. We have harvested FOUR sets of chickoos of at least 10kg each harvest. We have harvested star berries and aamlas, ramphals and jacks. Now the next round of jacks are growing fast and to our immense joy apples as well.

Compost and clean up your city

Compost and clean up your city

 

Teaching the kids to compost in Hoskote

We got a pit full of wasted, over ripe fruit from the Safal depot near our farm and dumped it in the specially made pits in my farm. Instead of just wasting the property, we joined hands with the St Josephs School senior class kids and they were brought to the farm to be taught to be more sustainable in their way of life. We have strayed away from how to be frugal and sustainable like our parents and forefathers were and instead, tried to be imitators of the West and  lost what was a sustainable way of living.  I always remember a pit in the garden into which all garden waste and kitchen waste were thrown. This waste once composted and broken down into black sweet smelling earth, we fed back to the garden when we re-potted the plants or topped up compost in the beds.

Kids learning to compost.
 The schools that came enjoyed the classes we held, teaching them to understand the basics of sustainable living. They loved their visits and had no problems eating with hands when they were fed simple village meals. We also did a quick talk on menstrual hygiene for both boys and girls so they understood what it was all about and how important it is to realise its just a bodily function and not something unclean that man has made it out to be.

  Menstrual hygiene which both girls and boys were educated.

Many of the girls were first scared to tell us, but after a while they let down their guard and told us how badly they were treated when going through their monthly, normal, cycle. This was where we stepped in and the older kids too to explain how important it is to look after their Mums and sisters and its just a normal part of life and not something unclean. Many boys who came from all boy homes were glad of the education which they would not have got otherwise.

They loved our hands on talks

Im so glad that so many schools çame forward and sent their kids in whole bus loads.  We also taught them hygiene when they ate bananas -- the skins had to be thrown on the compost pile, not desecrated the whole farm. Thank you Maam and Sir said many of the kids who come from poorer and marginalised homes. They could never have enjoyed an open space orchard like ours. And Im glad we were able to do this with the children  of so many schools before we sold the farm altogether.  

The beauty of the Hoya

 

The pink Hoya brought from Perth

Many years ago I was given two pieces of Hoya brought from Perth, West Australia by my sister Christine. The pieces couldn't have been more than 5 inches long and I grew them. They grew rapicly but I think I over fed them in huge pots with wet waste compost, so all they did was grow and grow without a flower in sight. I thought it was no sunlight, I blamed it on too much watering, but nothing would get it to flower. And in no time, five whole years passed.

There are literally hundreds of bunches all over

But to my utter  luck the vine seemed happy on my balcony and its leaves began to shine and it spread across the entire trellis work. On one of my annual holidays in the UK with my son David, he said "Mum why don't you try feeding it some Epsom Salts? "  

He bought me a packet and I carried it home to India to feed my Hoyas. In a few weeks bunches of buds appeared and the plant flowers twice a year now.

Enid shared a [piece of her White Hoya!

Meanwhile I had begun a Whatsapp gardening group and in minutes I had a gardener respond that she had a white Hoya and would I like a piece?! Ofcourse I would and in weeks and months the pieces grew huge and this year -- barely in a year I got my first white Hoya bloom! They are outstandingly beautiful and emit a delicate scent. I will share ONLY with growers and gardeners who can make the effort to grow them and send me pictures of the blooms!

The waxy Hoya!

Then a gardener from Pintovaddo in Goa, said --"Come over and take my brown Hoya cutting. Imagine that?? I got the brown from Lillia Pinto in Goa, a prize winning gardener and my collection has grown to three. Gardeners are good people. They share with no expectations, like I do now. Dozens of gardeners in Goa are growing my pink Hoya and sending me pictures of them flowering. Now I've begun to share among the mothers of seminarians and the priests whom my son Steven is in touch with. 

Speckled leaves!

And the leaves took me a long time to get used to. I thought they had a problem, some sort of virus! But No! They are speckled like that!

Scare those dratted birds away!

 

Last week when we went to harvest our fruit in Hoskote we were surprised to see beer bottles hung up on the branches of the fruit trees. Bonny a teetotaller was completely annoyed and said "what the heck is he trying??"

I chuckled, as I understood what Rajanna the caretaker was achieving with the bottles.-- he gets most annoyed to see good fruit wasted on the ground by parakeets, and Seven Sister Babblers. So this was his way of scaring them off. The bottles clanked in the breeze and there were no fruit marauders anywhere. The dratted things come even for our tamarind -- don't really eat it, just make a huge mess. Tamarind fruits for us only once a year in Hoskote and I have planted only the best -- Salem Tamarind. I can barely bring it home and my customers snap it up as its so flavourful and fresh. 

Kgs of Salem Tamarind every week!

We are enjoying the farm for a few more months till the new owner finishes all the formalities and the money is transferred to the boys. I get bags of sweet Thai tamarind, the nellie kai, sour limes, chickoos ofcourse and the last of the ramphals. The mango crop has begun to flower and in a few weeks we;'ll spray them and put up the yellow bottles with the fruit fly lures to safeguard our organic mango crop. I eat ALL the sweet tamarind. I mean this is my last chance and I save all seeds for Fr Valerian Vaz the Provincial of the Saligao seminary.  He will grow saplings and make some good money ( hopefully) from that for the seminary.

Sour sops have begun!

We had a tall Sour sop tree in the Hayes rd compound and that's where I had my first taste of Sour sop with my Nanna Augusta. What a wonderland of fruit this garden was and we never had to buy any sort of fruit, just pick them off ripe from the tree like I am doing now in Hoskote.

The miraculous chapel of Candelaria, Pilerne, Goa

 

The miraculous chapel of Our Lady of Candelaria, Pilerne, Goa

The steps up to the chapel on the hill

As children we were taken to the miraculous Our Lady of Candelaria chapel on the hill. I hated going as we had to climb so many steps up to the chapel! But if Dad said we go, there was no discussion. The chapel was tiny and the statue nothing spectacular to us children, but any intention Dad or Mum made was almost instantly granted to them. I remember Dad had given my Uncle next doors house to the army to help him and his young family get rent to live on. However soon the family grew to eight kids and the family needed the house back to live in. The army refused and Dad ran around from office to office to beg for it to be returned. With no hope in sight he went to Candelaria and begged Our Blessed Mother and the house was returned in a few months.   

The chapel is much bigger now

Over the years the chapel has been expanded by the faithful giving donations towards its renovation and expansion. It was the feast when we were visiting and it was such a special visit for me as all my memories came flooding back. We walked the distance from our home in Furtavaddo and that was a pretty distance. This time we happily drove by car and then were worried about parking! 

Protective wall and tower

We went because the young Parish priest has become an old friend and gave our Steve such a wonderful taste of what his ministry will be like when he is ordained. That's when I felt a sense of peace, that my Steve will be happy in his chosen path. I left it all at the feet of Our Lady of Candelaria on the hill. 

Adoption need not only be children or animals!

                           

Adoption of two Tabibuea Roseas on Hayes rd

Our Rosea in Hoskote

Two young  Rosea trees were planted at the top of our Hayes Road. Then in typical BBMP fashion they are left to die with no maintenance. Thats when we decided to adopt them and water them till they could manage by putting down deeper roots to an underground  water source. Inbetween some nasty person beheaded one and we nursed the stump back to life. Now they have raised their heads and give us a lot of joy to see they are managing well and growing taller by the day. Time to stop watering, except for the occasional bottle I put on a Saturday.

 A baby Indian Almond

Then around a dozen Indian Almond, champas and Jamuns were planted near the St Josephs school. I tried asking the priests to water them but no response. So here were two old people, carrying a dozen  5 litre Bisleri bottles of water and watering the trees after Mass every week. People stared, but we didn't care. We kept watering and  had the most weird questions -- are you buying Bisleri and watering them? Give me a bottle rather than waste!  Today they have doubled their height and manage their own water. We have stopped  watering them completely.

Residency Rd medicinal Honges and spider lillies.

Then suddenly over night dozens of lovely young 2 feet tall Honges and spider lillies were planted on Residency rd. Ofcourse they were just planted, no watering after that. Many began to dry up and die and that bothered me on my morning jog past them. I asked Kiran the road sweeper and he smiled broadly and said "Definitely Amma!"and the trees kept dying. That's when we decided again to be the Good Samaritans and water the babies till they are able to find their own water source. 

Its so strange but people will feed dogs and asthma causing pigeons, but trees which will help clean the pollution in our cities, they don't see the positives. How do we educate us humans that our health and clean air is freely given by mature trees?? 

Trees clean the air by acting as natural filters, absorbing harmful gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide through their leaves. They also trap particulate matter like dust and smoke on their bark and leaves, while producing oxygen through photosynthesis. A single mature tree can absorb over 48 pounds of CO2 annually.

$48$

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