This Wednesday was about fixing a drip to irrigate the Tuwar plants. Our watering woes are not ending and the rain has been dismal this monsoon. Ragi will survive but Tuwar / legume saplings need water. Preetam was visiting the city market on the weekend and agreed to haul back the 35 metre pipe and distributors. He also gave me the Mseal, There is a shop called Karthik Enterprises on S.P road which specialises in equipment for setting up drips at home or on farms. (In case, any reader would like to know). Vasantha arranged for a used 25 litre Bisleri bottle and we were set.(later , we needed a scale to measure the plant - I luckily had it. A knife to cut the plastic --I only had a paper cutter, put in last minute which we had to make do, and scissors for cutting the twine- which we managed with the cutter; small things that we don't think of beforehand and are always struggling with at the farm)
Class 5 kids were prepped with what to observe by Roshni and this worked very well . They came in with their journals and recorded their observations. The Ragi plant had grown to 9.5 cms!!! Yay! Laksh got the kids to punch holes in the pipe and fix the distributors while Vasantha and a few children fixed the pipe on the 25 litre drum. Some of the kids turned the soil, others observed termites eating their boundary ropes, and others played in the free space. I again found kids very sweetly tipping their water bottles over the Tuwar plants while worrying about lack of water. They have adopted one Tuwar plant each (why?!) and talk of it as their own! It was a rushed one hour and it got over so soon. Back to school with scheduled classes . Zeta ( class 4) missed the farm visit because they were cooking. Their Ragi dish was Ragi Muthia- tried and perfected by Ashwini. Here is the day in pictures:
0 Comments
I reach school to find the Ragi seedlings sprouted in two big pots arranged by Vasantha. What a happy picture it was - the tiny plants looking very happy- swishing away in the lovely Bangalore morning breeze. And such a lovely green. (Ardhendu da, founder of the sustainable agriculture organisation, DRCSC informs me, when I ask about poetry/literature around this unique colour green, "Bengal being a Rice growing area ,has many songs about the greenery of young rice seedlings ,often compared with the colour of emerging/young Banana leaf"! A quick internet search revealed a lovely folk tale from Vietnam called, Heaven and Earth, Kitchen recipes in the book, Songs of the Bamboo, by Xuan-Lan Nguyen vividly describing the traditional New year dishes that depict the paddy green of the vegetation. Here is a google book link :https://www.amazon.com/Songs-Bamboo-Xuan-Lan-Nguyen/dp/1625160089/) Anyhow, to complete the day's chronicle, we had to now check the farm Ragi. Our concerns of under watering Ragi seeds continue and weekly visits begin on a slightly nervous note. But since it had rained heavily the previous night, there is hope. Mixed with practicalities- the slushy path to the farm is not exciting and when I find that the school bus to the farm cannot be arranged , it is a bit of stress . But nothing like the excitement of kids- barring a few everyone else wants to walk (err run!) . One group (Alpha-class 5) cannot make it as they are busy with their cooking so we manage with two groups. At the farm, Ragi has sprouted. Not looking as happy as the school one but growing it is. Roshni had flagged the issue of observations a night before so we got the kids to write in their journals about the colour, smell, taste, and the height of the tallest Ragi plant using a small measuring scale. Vasantha did the measurement and explained why she cut off the roots to measure the plant. It was 5 cm tall at the farm. Laksh (who wasn't able to make it this Wednesday) advises us on the phone- "if they reach 10 cms we can transplant". Certainly not yet. Since rains are our only source of water, we have to be monsoon watchers. Rain guage readings in school can help at this point to actually measure the rainfall but setiing it up now is a bit late, I suppose. Kids had some nice observations about the different shades of green colour of the seedlings and a discussion about chlorophyll can be taken up in the classroom. Here is a nice resource: https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/why-do-you-see-different-shades-of-green-in-a-garden.html The Tuvar Dal had germinated too and the seedlings were swaying in the breeze as well . Zeta's plot saplings were quite a success -almost every seed had germinated while Alpha and Epsilon didn't see many saplings. Vasantha will discuss these observations in the class -(correct ways to sow the seeds) and the why of school Ragi growth rate is better than the farm Ragi growth rate. Some kids were already able to guess the role of a healthy soil . The kids deweeded and by then it was an hour already! Came back to the school to find Roshni and Jalaja and Alpha kids busy prepping and cooking -it was their turn that day and the Ragi dish was something special- Ragi uppitu and they were trying out a recipe belonging to Jalaja's father. Uppitu was a success. I missed documenting the main step of moistening the Ragi flour just enough like the making of "Puttu" so was a bit bah about it. Alpha kids watching the whole process agreed to draw the recipes out for putting it up on the notice board . Sreeja and Vasantha quickly gave me an update around various soil related experiments they are trying out with kids. Sreeja has divided various agriculture project ideas (soil erosion, weathering, Aquaponics, Hydroponics) amongst students and the classroom is full of interesting contraptions. There were lots of insightful conversations with Madhu, Suja, Sreeja, Vasantha around agriculture and farming in the teachers room. Suja had come in to school and we discussed the slow food movement, gender dynamics in urban farming, and limits to consumption. I thought maybe an organised session on these perspective would help us all. Time , of course is a serious issue. Also have to start thinking about evaluation- what would we like to evaluate at the end of the term apart from a good harvest! The day ended with Ashwini showing me the Ragi pot brought by a kid from home- It was lovely and nice to hear about kids's experiences of growing at home. Here is the week in pictures: Sreeja and Vasantha in school are doing a bunch of activities around soil. They got the kids to prepare a potting mix and sow Ragi seeds in school . They are also making the kids do activities to get them to see layers in soil ( the kids got soil from home, clay, in school, and from the farm) ; making vermicompost , and classroom activities around weathering and soil formation.
The internet is full of soil related activities and classroom resources. I found a lovely short Clay animation film showing four ecosystem services provided by animals in agricultural systems thanks to Ardhendu da about healthy soil. Here it is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN-QQFjEqyw Ashwini continued bringing interesting Ragi dishes into the community lunch . The 5th July community lunch prepared by Class 6 (Epsilon) and Vasantha and Ashwini had Ragi chips (shankar Poliya/ shakkar paare) . Despite not attending, I managed to get a dabba full of yummy Ragi chips to chomp on. Who says Ragi mudde/ Ragi Ladoo are the few things one can make of Ragi! Every Wednesday Poorna surprises us all with the variety! Here is the week in pictures! Monday- six days after sowing Ragi seeds - arrived and we were curious. First thing in the morning- off to the farm and boy, oh boy, disappointment! A very dry patch . Some blades of green grass shooting up gave us hope but Laksh confirmed that they were Ragi .
What had happened? Too little water? No rain? Seeds not appropriate? Seeds needed some extra treatment? The land lacking nutrition ? Is Radha repenting the decision to offer us her land? Is her mother unable to water? Do they have enough water? No rain! Damn the rain! It hadn't rained at all since we planted and I immediately started to feel a bit superstitious( did we sow the seeds on the wrong Nakshatra date? ) Everyone had a hypothesis. In all this, I saw kids emptying their water bottles on the patch of dry land which to me was a very sweet gesture! Anyways, since we were there, we weeded the plots , sponsored the tanker money, and sowed the legumes (Beans and Tuwar ) around the boundary of the three plots . We also watered the patch. And got excited at the sight of the Rock lizard. Madhu was donated some Ragi seeds from the seed shop at Hebbal where she had bought Tuvar dal seeds (The shop keeper was very interested to learn about this project and had given her these seeds and wished her luck!). We decided to sow them in school this time and then transplant the saplings. In an hour or so , it was time to to go back to school -Most of the kids walked back to school through the mango orchard with hope but the caretaker was extra careful! And then, just like that, in the evening it rained! The day of sowing was also the day when kids worked a bit more on their scarecrows guided by Vanita. They have turned out very well. Kids in teams are discussing and designing and clothing the scarecrows and were having fun painting the faces.
The class 7 kids had to prep up for Wednesday cooking and they tried their hand at baking the Ragi cookies amongst other things. Roshni baked a few batches at home to supplement and Indira baked and served some next day. Lots of yummy cookies!! Vasantha designed a collaborative poetry writing exercise around a traditional Ragi song and pinned the poster up on the notice board for kids to complete. The picture below gives an idea. The school gardening team under Naveen, Vasantha and Kalyani's guidance planted some marigold seeds amongst other things. Deepika and Ashwini quickly got class 4 kids to do free writing about the farm visit and summarised the visit visually. See picture below. It was a very nice way to recap! Roshni and I sat and made some seed packets following this tutorial and gave it to kids to plant them back home . I didn't like this idea of us adults doing 45 packets with no children involved but there was absolutely no time that day. I also didn't take a picture of the final seed packets! (Note to self: Time management!!) In pictures, this is how the two days ( 27th and 28th June) looked like: At the beginning of this initiative, we had earmarked Wednesdays. Wednesdays are my non teaching days at APU and also the day of community lunch at school giving us a chance to integrate cooking with Ragi, This one set day a week provided us with a peg to plan ahead. But we didn't account for some pre-scheduled activities of the school such as the all staff meet that happens on the last Wednesday of every month. The school shuts early and the kids /teachers are very busy in the remaining time. hmmm. explore another slot where the 3 groups and involved teachers can come together for 2 hours in the week was not easy. But we managed with teachers exchanging their classes and letting go of their teaching time to fit it later. Again, I was impressed with the way teachers valued the learning from the theme over rigid class periods and the school culture enabling them with this. Of course , the tyrrany of timetables will come back to haunt us but for now we enthusiastically carved out some time on a Tuesday . And so Tuesday arrived- the day of sowing but not with its share of last minute panic. . Seeds!!! Our main ingredient for the sowing was missing till the last minute. We had scoped out various sources for seeds in Bangalore( Vasantha's own stock; Hebbal seeds shop, Yellhanka shop, GKVK, and Sripriya's stock) but somehow a day before we were still without seeds. Finally everyone realised that Sripriya's seed stock given to school can be used and tra la! Tuesday we had a bag of seeds ready to be planted. PHEW. This was the list of things we took with us to the farm: 1. Seeds (1 Kg- but we used quite less-maybe 200 gms of it?) 2. Watering can (water was sourced from Radha's house) 3. Twine / jute rassi ( Bought by Vasantha from her neighbourhood shop but we ran a bit short) 4. Rangoli powder to mark boundaries. 5. Puja materials (cocunut/agarbatti/haldi/ kumkum) 6. Puja prasad (jaggery lumps and chana dal-quickly assembled by Jalaja that morning itself 7 Marigold seeds 8. Garden tools for digging ( school has them) * Laksh consulted his older relatives and found out the Nakshatra on that day. It was Aridra. that is also in jest refereed to as Daridra because of excessive rain) ** we had reminded students a week before to carry caps/ wear appropriate shoes/ get a small bag and extra water. At the farm, we measured three 15/20 plots ( half of 30/40) using Laksh's shoe size (the biggest amongst us) , marked the boundaries using stone, sticks, and tied ropes and kept one area free for broadcasting seeds. We talked of the Nakshatra , did a small symbolic puja, ate the prasad and kids were involved in measuring their plots, tying rope, and using Rangoli powder for the boundaries. Then we prepared the plot by digging it loose, threw in seeds, sprinkled water and covered it loosely with soil again. That's it! And with this effort, one fine sunny morning of June 2017 we became proud temporary owners of three plots of land! Shall I let the pictures do the rest of the talking? We are still grappling with how to showcase some of the learning related activities and outputs created by children . For now, we will post them on the blog. Below you will find a creative output of Group Alpha equivalent to Grade 5 based on the introduction class taken by Jalaja and Roshni. The lesson plan can be found here .
The Ragi Project also has a logo! I had requested Juny, who is this amazing graphic artist and designer at Azim Premji University to come up with something similar to the Ragi plant and the idea of learning . He very sweetly took out time and designed something real quick which Roshni and I both liked! Roshni feels it is also similar to the Poorna Logo and she exclaimed and I quote: "It's a circle, it's sacred, it's full of possibility...:))"
I am unable to get this linked to the title of the page-even requested one of my very skilled students at the university, Manyu, who tried his hand at it but sighhhh. Without changing the website theme (and we might lose the already typed up content ) we wont be able to do it! So, that's why it remains hidden on the website. We will continue using it in the school and other communication. A very eventful day. Class 7 kids cooking and rejecting the idea of making one Ragi dish for their community lunch. Ooops! Ashwini came to the rescue and decided to add an extra sweet item accommodating our Ragi mania! This time it was Ragi Panjeeri a 'prasadam' item . I must say roasting large quantities of Ragi is not an easy task! But the end result of good roasted ragi is always yummm. (As a FYI: I learnt from Jalaja a week back about the perils of stomach disorders because of under roasted Ragi ) I saw many kids eyeing the panjiri with suspicion and a few asking for second servings. Can't wait to see the results of the survey conducted by Roshni and Kalyani about Ragi preferences. ;)) Vasantha , Madhu , Laksha and I visited Radha's farm in the morning to get a grip on the actual modalities of farming. Half an acre is no small land and we quickly realised that we won't be able to cultivate on all that land. Laksha has done similar projects before with Srishti School and gave us several useful ideas. Many things got decided such as : 1. We will make three plots and further subdivide them to get 3 class groups working in smaller groups. This is also an excellent way of teaching standard and non standard measurements.We decided to use hands and legs but later Sujit also suggested that we can use sutli/rassi/ twine. Vasantha will arrange for rangoli powder/ sticks/ and twine for marking when we sow next Tuesday. 2. We will sow Ragi in a small area and then transplant it in the three plots at a later stage - according to Laksh this will allow for some hands on excitement and learning around transplantation as opposed to the traditional method of broadcasting seeds. 3. We decided to do mixed cropping -Ragi with legumes/vegetables and marigolds and get children to see why (marigold is a natural pest repellent and legumes improve soil nutrition) 4. In the beginning when the sowing activities are less we will get a group to make a scarecrow. Vinitha is running with this idea and already the kids of class 5 assembled a structure and painted a face. Some discussion of whether it should be a girl or boy also took place ! ;) There is a lot on the internet about various aspects surrounding the scarecrow : history/ symbolism / culture / mythology . Some good information can be found here: a. Thoughtco.com b. modernfarmer.com c. history because its here. Julia Donaldson -one of my favourite authors- also has a lovely book on this theme that kids can read up on. And then there is 'The Wizard of Oz' , ofcourse ! 5. We will use the Poorna garden as a nursery for the farm and encourage children to learn how to transplant marigold and other vegetables. Naveen, another parent who facilitates the school garden and the rain water harvesting, and us will work together on this synergy 6. We have to arrange for Ragi /Tuwar dal seeds - Radha has been buying it from her family farm in Devanahalli but wont be able to arrange for us in this short time- we need 1 KG and Vasantha is willing to explore her own family stock for that ; some garden tools; and compost /wood ash 7. The class 7-8 kids will do the soil test three times. They did it today and then post compost and then post harvest 8. Kids will keep a journal and record other observations too- for example: observation of insects in the soil and researching on who helps the farmer and who doesn't, At Hebbal there is a Government funded research institute of Agriculturally important insects. Perhaps we can pay them a visit to deepen this understanding some time in the year. 9. We decided to use the school rain gauge in the farm and see the rainfall measure. However need to flesh this activity as to when we measure recordings, who measure it and and how. This is a useful website but I think the teachers will know more on this themselves. 10. It is possible to even compare Rice and Ragi water requirements. We still need to figure out how to do this in a practical manner. After all this discussion of possibilities, kids guided by Laksh did the soil test. We tested for Ph levels, and the Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium(NPK) test) . All the tests showed that the soil had only medium level contents, Laksh said a healthy soil should be high in these elements and when we got back Radha confirmed our finding by saying that she has not been adding any manure to the land for the past two years. It was fun; but hot and dry and the kids would get interested in other things too- like going after a small beetle; playing around with the garden tools; and err... even throwing sand at each other! Perhaps we should start next week with making some non negotiable rules for safety especially concerning garden tools and then allow them some time to explore on their own. We also need to remind class 4-5-6 kids to get caps and water when they visit the fields. Chandru left us stranded due to some misunderstanding (He only dropped us one way in the bus and was waiting for our call to pick us back- none of us had his number etc.) and so we walked back to school. Not a bad walk despite the sun shining above our heads- it took us 10 minutes as the kids knew all the shortcuts and enjoyed running amok a bit. ;) A really hilarious sight for me was Poorna kids carrying the garden tools on their shoulders and walking on the road leading back to school. The neighbouring school, DPS North, had finished for the day and parents in their cars were coming in to pick up their kids. I got quite a kick in watching this contrast of walking vs driving and the notions of multiple childhoods. See the last picture in this photo set as reference! It has just been week 3 but things are moving at a fast pace at Poorna around the Ragi theme. Roshni has organised a notice board outside the library where learning outputs around the Ragi project will be displayed every week. For now, the Akki-Ragi story illustrations , and the illustrated Ragi ladoo recipe are up. The mixed age group cooking class baked a yummy batch of Ragi cookies under Asha's guidance. (We have to come up with an eye catching capture of these illustrated recipes similar to They Draw and Cook. Could it be integrated with the art classes? ) The soil testing kits also arrived- delivered to the doorstep by the sweet folks of Vasa Scientific Company. Quite formidable looking ! The other big news was a recce visit to the farm made by Roshni, Jalaja, Madhu, Vasantha, Sreeja and Arundhati to the farm. They went after their Tuesday staff meet -quite late in the day. And to greet them was this lovely open space in the middle of a concrete jungle and the generosity of Radha's family. Here are some pictures . |
Archives
January 2018
Categories
All
|