Solitude Farm: A Farm To Plate Experience

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Solitude Farm in Auroville practise Masanobu Fukuoka's teachings of permaculture. They conduct a farm tour and other workshops. I was in for the day tour which starts at 10 am in the morning, takes through the farm and explained the philosophy behind and the techniques.

The tour ends at noon which is the right time for lunch. Solitude farm also has a cafe which provides food made from the fresh produces in the farm.

This was the lunch menu the day I visited

Solitude farm is run by an auroville resident Krishna McKenzie. In the tour he talked about how the farm is raised in accordance with Masanobu Fukuoka's teachings. Everything is grown organically and with minimal human intervention.

I found out Solitude on my first day of bicycle exploration. It's these long mud-roads that took me there, in fact I was a little lost and decided to just enjoy cycling.

It's this huge windmill-like-thingy that caught my attention first. Leading there was the farm. It was a normal day where not many people were not there. I was a little confused what to do.

I always wanted to learn about permaculture but I had no idea how a permaculture farm looked like. So, I took a walk inside and kinda got lost. It was just an area with a lot of trees and plants unlike the monoculture farms.

That's when I decided to come for the tour which happens every Saturday.

That is one wild fruit I wish I had asked to pluck and try. Always wondered how it tastes like.

There is option to volunteer in the farm too with accommodation. There's a fee that covers the food and accommodation for that. I found these tree houses special in most communities here in Auroville.

During the tour, Krishna explained how each and every plant that grows there were important or had a role. The method they followed didn't check if those plants are good for human consumption. Some volunteer plants just made the soil rich while others just grew consuming the nutrients.

The farm gives an example of how the nature knows how to sustain itself if we don't disturb it much for our selfish needs only aiming at the profits.

However, they also showed it's not impossible to take profits by providing the high quality produces from the farm. The only difference is they'll be giving out from the abundance of nature which are also healthy options for the consumers.

The first one is this cafe which makes meals, drinks and snacks using the produces from the farm. The food tastes amazing. And the drinks! The one made out of butterfly pea flowers.

If you are visiting Auroville and if it is in season, I highly recommend trying Radha's consciousness. It's the name given for the drink and it just tastes so good. It doesn't have the refined sugar but they provide sweetener if you ask for it. I think this was one of my favourites so far.

The food here is vegan and fresh. I never knew vegan food can be so refreshing and delicious.

The other way of income that was explained was the CSA baskets.CSA stands for Community supported agriculture. This way, they provide a basket full of the produces to whoever enrolled for a fixed price.

CSA in general strengthens the local communities. This also helps farmers to continue to produce high quality produces not much thinking about the profits through unnecessary chemicals and non-environment friendly ways.

In addition to all of that, they conduct recreational activities too. I think if you are staying in and around Auroville, it'll be a good place to involve in more community based activities.

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