Adventures of an Accidental Farmer: 2017-2019 Chronicles

Warning: Long Post

The Autumn of 2017 marked a new phase in my life. As a fresh PhD from an American university, I was burnt out, scarred from the experience and completely lost. While there was some element of a flock mentality that pushed me to follow normal course laid out for scholars like me, my ideal life situation spread out in front of my eyes - quite literally.

I am an Indian woman and a Bavarian Bahu. Only two plans enthuse me and help me get out of bed - writing and learning about farming, a lifestyle Bavaria is most commonly associated with. My mother-in-law owns a small patch of land and a spot of woods deep in the highlands of Bavarian forests. Though her parents did some farming and poultry, she herself only maintains a small kitchen garden. During my occasional visits before 2017 she would assign me odd jobs whenever I showed an interest in getting out for some fresh air and working under the sun.

In the Autumn of 2017 all this changed. Since I was living more permanently in the Bavarian forests, expectations were higher - only compounded by the fact that, in her head, I was not doing any other work. My writing, specifically the book I was completing at that time, did not count as work per se. For my new family, whatever I did with my life was not really work if it involved sitting in front of a laptop. Despite our different approaches to life, kitchen garden and other land/forest work became a bonding exercise. I committed myself to learning whatever my MiL had to teach me about farm and fields. She, in turn, reciprocated by trying to expand her limited operations to suit my interests and, more importantly, palate. Following is a short account of my adventures so far. 

Prelude (September 2017-March 2018)

My first few months of work are now hazy since I had not, at that time, decided that this would be my life. I also used to wake up at inhuman hours to go to my half-day German lessons in the nearest city and put in a few hours of work immediately upon return. A pause or rest wasn't an option especially towards the end of October and in November due to shortening days. My work involved raking leaves, small branches and pine cones from the grass, driveway and elsewhere. I mused flippantly on more than one occasion that Mohabbatein should have used red instead of yellow/orange leaves.

As we move into October, I learned that every two years we get a bumper crop in apples and we were in for serious amount of produce in 2017. Much of these two months involved picking and sorting apples into wheelbarrows. The good apples that we stored in caskets were as many or fewer than the bad apples - too green or carriers of deer-teeth marks and worm holes. While my work was slow and hesitant my MiL, even with her body pain issues, filled up far more barrows than I can imagine. It fell on my shoulders to push barrows full of bad apples down the hill and into the forest as the nominally young person around. As the festival season rolled in, I gained inches but my forearms were surprising taut and stronger. The carpal tunnel syndrome - that curse of any PhD candidate - healed with time. Insomnia was no longer a friend. These were still early days - I don't think I can lay claim to any education but my body had learn to relax.

Farm to Table: I would have loved to make apple cider with some of our crop but this idea of mine was shot down with so much vigor and hostility that I had to put the idea on hold for when I had more allies. I, however, learned to make a wonderful creation called gelee or jelly with cooking rum. It works great for baking Christmas cookies but it is also a great spread in general. 

Basant and Beginning (April 2018)

In the winter months life came to a standstill. Apart from shoveling snow from the driveway there wasn't much in the way of building character (random Calvin and Hobbes reference). I focused on my book heavily, ignored my German classes and returned to sub-optimal lifestyle choices. Spring brought a breath of fresh air and the birds tweeted urgently. A ginger male cat started stalking our lazy cat, significantly hindering her free movement (MeToo).

Over Spring months, my MiL and I finalised our ambitious plan of growing potatoes for the first time apart from several new vegetable options as part of our first phase of expansion. Potatoes occupied most of our attention during the preparation time and the job of digging trenches and weeding out all kinds of roots and plants from the beds was delegated to me. Although I took a lot of time with just one bed, I learned to identify weeds, edible plants and roots of older trees that grew in my trench area. 

In the end, I had hacked the same bed 3 times over, creating 2 nice little mounds (see potato bed below) on each side while the other two were only giving a cursory dig. Weeds were still visible when we added the manure. Months later I felt validated when I dug out more than 50 medium to large-sized potatoes from this particular bed. 

Confronting the Ickiness of Manure

When I was growing up, I always approached shraads and tithis with dread. The loss of a loved one recedes in your memory and, when you can no longer cry, the pyre of dung cakes will do that job for you. As a bad Hindu, I stayed away from dung cakes but as an aspiring farmer, I had to confront my classist and urbane disposition to the ickiness of animal waste. One fine day I was asked to get into the car immediately as we were going to pick up 'Mist' (the German word for dung). As I got in with considerable trepidation, my MiL added that I probably want plastic gloves. I did. 

We went to the nearest creek where a neighborhood farmer had dropped mounds of dung-plus-straw mix. It was surprisingly hard to dig and my prudishness didn't help either. I had only filled up one bucket when my Mil have covered over 3 and was urging me hurry up. Her desire to not be seen in the act brought to me doubts regarding the legality of our work, further slowing my pace. As an immigrant, one doesn't want to even be remotely connected to any acts with duplicitous legality - regardless of what politicians like Trump will tell people. 

Armed with our mist from questionable sources, mentally preparing for deportation, we headed straight to our garden. We deposited the manure neatly into the well-dug trench and covered it with earth (recreating the mounds) while we only haphazardly mixed earth with dung in the other two. My Mil consoled me that it did not matter much but I understood her logic much later. In April, dry days with lots of sunshine are fewer and far between. One must take advantage of these days even if it means adjusting our plans and compromising on the work quality. As we went along, days with heavy duty labour and those spent lazily looking out of rain-swept windows while trying to get over a writer's block became normal. As summer arrived, we planted rows of onions, garlic, broad beans, red radish and salad greens in the garden. In August, even as we harvested some of these vegetables, we planted leeks and cauliflower. Fun Fact: leek plants can survive snow and harsh winters...

"Dear god has give us two hands" (May 2018)

Yellow onions with bud inset

May saw steady and inspiring work. All the beds were meticulously de-weeded but the duplicitous manure was reserved for onion beds. We planted yellow and red pearl onions leaving a space of approximately two open hands between two seeds. The top of the pearl should be above surface level and exposed to the sun. We saved some of the pearls in case mice worked their way through our onion crop. I dearly hoped the mice will not get them not only because of our hard work ... I was already dreaming of pearl onion sambhar.

My teacher was inexperienced with garlic leaves that had sprouted in bunches around the garden but the general idea was to separate the pods and re-plant again with sufficient distance between each pods - the leaves need to be exposed to sun. Sometimes I dug around plants with too much force and damaged entire bunches. To avoid this, I started using only one hand in some cases, provoking a swift reaction from the Mil who insisted that "the dear god has given us two hands (for a reason)." The bad Hindu also happened to be an atheist who chose to ignore this particular lesson but this went on to become a recurring garden joke as we went forward.

The results with garlic were not satisfactory - late in August, I dug tiny bulbs out ... to my greatest dismay although, when cooked, they had a subtle, intense taste. In the coming season, I will plant them deeper and with greater distance between two bulbs. Will update on the results in the next year's chronicle.

I never realised tomatoes were a project that extended across months. Already in February this year (2019), we planted the seeds in small pots and set them on window sills. As the plants sprouted, we tied them to little sticks to support their growth. In April or May, depending on the weather, these will be transferred to the garden. When we planted tomato plants in the garden in May 2018, we added red basil seeds to the bed - this is supposed to improve the taste of the fruit. The tomatoes were yummy after they were harvested but no basil leaves showed up around these plants. Parsley has to be similarly cultivated on window sills first.

I chose beans because they are legume plants and if, my school education serves me well, they enrich the soil. A few plants like chillies (my Mil got bell-shaped ones because she was told they are hot enough for the Indian in the family - they were), zucchini, cucumbers belong in pots and not the garden, at least at our farm. I also got a ready-to-pluck basil plant from the supermarket but transferred it to a proper pot and tended well to it - or so I tell myself. Over the summer, we made several rounds of yummy pesto that supports my claim.

Potato bed with the rhubarb plant on bottom right

Two basic lessons from May and months to follow included: 1. Water between rather than over plants. 2. Regularly de-weed between plants as the season progresses. Sometimes, in plants like onions, weeds are intertwined and it requires a lot of care and precision. Learning to distinguish between plant leaves and weeds came with practice and mistakes.

The rhubarb plant (on the right) was the cherished project of an uncle who had passed away in 2018. It was a considerable surprise for me when it grew out of the potato bed I had dug out repeatedly to make sure every root and weed was out of the picture. And yet, this stem plant grew as if to dish out a moral lesson that finding a new life that gives you meaning does not erase the past. Nor did it affect the magnificent potato produce later on in the season.

Lollo rosso or red leaf lettuce
are my favourite

Farm to Table: I was probably the only one to enjoy the intensely sour rhubarb compote. I had developed a taste for almost anything the garden was going to provide. May only provided salad greens, radish (prematurely harvested by a temperamental Mil), raspberries and black and red currants.

Salvaging damages from natural causes (June-July 2018)
I was away most of June on a wonderful holiday to Portugal (thanks to the cousin who planned it!) but when I got back things looked bad. Rain and dust storms left a sad look on our precious plants. Non-edible greens/weeds were hopelessly tangled with our worn-out plants while dust covered  many leaves. It took days to clear the damage and, during this time, I acquired a new garden tool according to my own experience and needs for this job. This was the first time I had deliberated on what I would like to use for the jobs assigned to me - I felt like a grown-up.

Some of my chores were, however, infantalising. I was asked to use hand-held scissors (electric or manual) to snip grass close to buildings or around trees because 'short people attend to low-hanging fruit'. While I bent over for hours cutting grass closely, collecting the waste and carrying it to our compost, others used lawnmowers they could easily drive around in!

Combing through grass around farm buildings, I came across a real treasure: wild thyme that grew only in particular spots. Fresh wild thyme made a wonderful addition to many dishes including this Jamie Oliver special. I was advised to dry thyme for months on paper towels and then transfer these to paper bags for more airing - this was another disastrous experiment that I do not intend to repeat. The thyme lost all its aroma in the process which makes me believe that I should freeze them like we do with parsley. I welcome suggestions on this count.

Another disaster struck us in July due to extreme exposure to sun - our raspberries dried out as did the beans. Not one to waste food, I took a bowl-full of bean pods out of their shells and let them dry out for a couple of months. I look forward to using the white beans one of these days - from the beginning I have somehow been thinking Cuban...

Farm to Table: If 2017, saw a bumper apple crop, Autumn 2018 was about plums, plums and more plums - and possible applications for them. I learned how to make marmalade, chutney, plums-in-red-wine and every other trick in the book to preserve plums. One fine day, a random Austrian couple showed up at our doorstep claiming that my Mil had mentioned to them - complete strangers - that they can help themselves to our plums. They wanted to make plum alcohol at home - legal in their country - and couldn't find enough in supermarkets. I had hoped that they would bring some of it back but they returned with more classy gifts (including a great herbs-n-salt mix) instead.


Ernte (August 2018)
I have already mentioned twice, for some reason, that I am a bad Hindu and an unwavering atheist. But my atheism is not a product of a rationalist temperament nor does it involve mocking believers. Faith is a product of social relations that extends, for me at least, into many aspects of my life - just not in a belief in god and religion. While growing up I had been around staunch believers who sought to reduce rituals and rites in their lives but as a good anthropologist I put my faith in rituals and stories - I have little time for religion. Possibly for this reason, I have always celebrated Pongal - the Tamil Harvest festival - even when I am all by myself. Gardening and tending to forests has been a spiritual exercise as much as it is about seeking a sustainable life.

I harvested this heart-shaped one on the day
Supreme Court of India decriminalised homosexuality

My Mil was surprised when I expressed a keen interest in Erntedankfest (a festival thanking the almighty for a bountiful harvest), where members of the parish collected produce and arranged them artistically in the church altar. Our modest potatoes and onions were "blessed" in the church for a few weeks but we also had an opportunity to enviously note the more sumptuous offerings of other parish members. Perhaps not all of them were harvested by the parish members themselves...

Our produce did not always look aesthetically pleasing but some of the harvest lasted us till end of February. I did not thank the almighty but I am grateful for the life farm, forests and foraging has offered to me - an opportunity to be whole - mind, body and spirit. Erntedankfest, like Pongal, was a ritualistic opportunity to express my gratitude.

As October 2018 rolled in, I got busy with my book submission deadline. Carpal tunnel syndrome, a stiff painful neck and insomnia were back. But this time around, I knew it was temporary. I now led a sustainable life, one that helped me de-weed the stress and flush out the toxicity of the world I had left behind.

The Accidental Kaddu: Me?

Post-Script
In February 2019, my Mil declared she needed a new compost container - the current one was overflowing. The wire-mesh holding it was removed and placed closed by, ready to receive fresh food and garden waste. The overflowing compost will now slowly break down its components into a grainy earth that I will, in future fill into some newly-dug beds. I started this task for 2019 in February before starting this post. It has been one whole cycle now.

The compost has been a metaphor of sorts for what this apprenticeship has meant for me. It had produced an unexpected surprise in August 2018. A squash plant randomly grew out of it - a result of a spoiled squash kootu (stew) that I had emptied into it at some point. It was heartening to see a new plant grow out of wasted food although no one could tell me when exactly it would be ready to eat - we had never grown squashes before. 

Post-Post-Script
Some of the farm-to-table experiments will be published separately as recipes.