A few friends from Rain Tree Park joined us on a farm visit to NaturePinks Organic Gardens that we had organized on the 24th December 2016. As they say, seeing is believing and we hoped to provide a first hand touch and feel experience of the crops we grow so folks can appreciate where the organic food on the table comes from and how.

After a two hour drive to our smallest 5 acre farm at Chalmeda and a simple organic lunch, we set out across the field on a 'guided walk' of the crop plots. Some of the crops that are now on the farm included - three types of tomatoes, potato, green chilli, brinjal, bhendi, drumstick, four types of gourds, papaya, watermelon, muskmelon, cucumbers, corn, carrot, beetroot, radish, many types of leafy vegetables, beans, broadbeans, clusterbeans, cowpea, onion, garlic, horsegram - all in different stages of growth.

Curiosity had its best in understanding our organic methods of cultivation. A quick view was provided into our soil management techniques that relied on green manures, vermicompost, biofertilizers, minerals, mulches, nitrogen fixing trees and non-compacting farm equipment. Environmentally friendly organic methods of drip irrigation, manual and mechanical weed management were demonstrated. Pest management using pheromone traps, physical cover protection, plant concoctions, bioagents, companion crops caught the eye of the visitors. Discussions on how organic food is beneficial and some of the challenges faced by the customer in identifying and sourcing genuine organic foods from the much publicized ones in the market were discussed over a cup of tea.

Finally, the visitors had the pleasure of picking produce direct from the farm - as fresh as it can get! We thank the visitor friends for managing to visit us despite the chores of the daily life - this goes to demonstrate the keen interest they had in ensuring their food was absolutely health-giving, trustworthy and free of harmful chemicals.

We are aware many others were very keen to join us for the visit but had to drop off last minute due to issues relating to health, schools, logistics and marathons. We will create more opportunities in future for some more farm visits, so stay tuned!