Trust Nature, Yield Goodness
The Core of Life is to connect with Mother Earth
Shivaayam Farm is the result of my fifty year itch, when kids started to leave the nest and city life started giving more stress than joy.
I often asked myself "what now" when I was reminded of my childhood dream of owning a farm. A very interesting journey started after that.
I made a list of potential places/states where I would have wanted to spend my golden years and found that most of those places don't allow a non-farmer to buy a farming land, except Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, out of which I chose MP.
In July 2017, me and mom got down at Khajhurao station and fell in love with the place immediately... a small station, mahua trees, sleepy temple town, relaxed faces etc.
Big factor for me to finalize this as "my town" was the acceptance of all kind of dresses (in other villages I was seen as an alien in spite of salwar-kameez, leave the trackpant-shirt). Khajhurao, being a popular tourist destination, have good cafes and international cuisines availability incase I miss green Thai curry or Italian pizza.
2018 started on a positive note when I become a "farm owner". After the reality of owning a farm sunk in, the discussion started to finalize a name. Mom wanted to have "Shiv" in it and daughter suggested "Aayam" (new dimensions, विस्तार, विविध पहलू, which happen to be my son's name too) and my third child "Shivaayam" took birth.
Hats off to my parents enthusiasm and energy (both are 70+ years old) that they supervise the farm development and starting 2021 they moved to stay in farm only to manage it more closely.
We try not to use any chemicals (though technically not yet an organic farm) because we consume our farm produce. We grow gehun (wheat), sarsoon (yellow and black musturd), matar (white peas), kala channa (black chickpea), moong dal (green gram), urad dal (breen gram) etc.
Fruit trees are yet to give full yield but we do get to eat few nimbu (lemon), anjeer (fig), amrood (guava), aanar (promogranade), aam (mango) etc.
Its a long term project with experiments and learnings and failures and victories and we love doing all of it season after season after season.
