The community is comprised of several devotee families living approximately 2 hours east of Toronto, Canada. There is good interaction between the local and the Toronto temple with our potluck picnics providing an excellent excuse for the Toronto devotees to take to the country for the day and an excellent opportunity for the locals to revel in devotee association.
The Sri Sri Gaura Nitai Deities which are being worshipped by Trishakti d.d. and Vyapaka dasa at their home at the Prabhupada-seva Rural Community.
On our farm (Vyapaka & Trishakti's), we have focused on developing a craft business to provide for our financial maintenance while simultaneously establishing the farm fields and vegetable garden. Since our maintenance is dependent on doing craft and trade shows which compel us to do a lot of traveling, the field work has been relegated to a tractor. Simply said, we are away too often at this time to be able to provide the care the cows and oxen demand. Our future plans include repairing the barn since it is in too rough a shape to house the cows and oxen. So in the meantime, we have developed the farm agriculturally and horticulturally with the aim of introducing animal draft in the future as circumstance permits. The farm and garden are organically certified by the Ontario Crop Producers and Processors for three years now.
The farm is 100 acres in size and contains three ponds. Two of them are at the front of the property near the house and adjacent to the gardens beds. The last couple of years have seen droughts in Ontario and the ponds have been a god-send for irrigating the garden. We are still eating from the 2001 garden harvest as of the time of this writing (May 2002) and have sufficient potatoes, beets and squash to nearly last us to the of the 2002 harvest. We will be planting our own seed potato now for the second year (var. Kennebec). A good portion of the garden's cornucopia is given to our worshipable Lordships in the Montreal and Toronto temples -- Sri Sri Radha Manohara and Sri Sri Radha Gopinatha.As time allows, we will increase season extension techniques and hopefully add on a greenhouse which should make us close to being self-sufficient in vegetables. There is presently 2 tonnes of spelt and two tonnes of hulless oats in storage and we will begin researching the purchase of a grist mill and a roller in the near future. Last year, over ten tonnes of spelt was sold off. Due to time pressures, only two fields were planted in 2000 to spelt and another field was dedicated to oats. The 2001 oat crop was a failure due to poor spring germination caused by the drought. Fortunately, the spelt fared well being a winter crop which took advantage of the rains in early spring and snow-melt. The balance of fields were under red or sweet clover (okay, and some weeds). In 2002, the fields are planted to rye (35 acres), spring wheat (5 acres), spelt (6 acres), sweet clover (3 acres) and the last six or seven acre field is waiting to be planted into buckwheat or perhaps red clover. All of the rye fields have been overseeded (frost seeded, please see the Frost Seeding article on the Grain Production page). There is approx. 60 workable acres with the balance being occupied by bush, residence, garden and wetlands.
Our farm land is very stony due to being situated in an area which saw glacial activity. As a result, the area is rolling and very beautiful to the eye but the soils are sandy loams and stony (in fact there are two gravel pits within a mile each way on our country road). It certainly isn't prime agricultural land but we take it as Krsna's mercy since it forces us to focus more on developing self-sufficiently rather than looking to provide extra income from commercial agriculture. However, we are keeping our options open as Srila Prabhupada instructs that it is permissible to sell the farm's surplus. Presently, the farm income has been ploughed back into purchasing equipment to develop the farm.
Another shot of working up the field for the spring wheat planting. The field was growing red clover for the preceding two years; hopefully, providing sufficient nitrogen for the heavy-feeding wheat crop. Crop rotation is key to successful, sustainable, self-sufficient organic agriculture.
The garden is situated adjacent to the house allowing us easy access and observation. As already mentioned, a nearby pond allows us the luxury of irrigating the crop. Dvija Gauranga Prabhu spent all last summer with us working in the garden and it is to his credit that we had such an ample vegetable harvest. Presently, Dvijagi is now working with Kenaya in his garden at the spa so more of the workload has fallen on Trishakti and my shoulders. But since we have either suspended or possibly terminated our duties as a farm inspector in the organic foods industry, more time should be available for the garden. Thankfully, except for one field, all of the fields are planted and need no more attention until harvest. This will allow us time to better focus on the planning and building of a new house and the vegetable garden.
Distributing the mercy (manure). After doing that for three days on and off, I had pain in places which I didn't even knew existed before. Though I am hopelessly out of shape, by the third day I was beginning to really enjoy it. It was nice to spend so much time outdoors and there was a nice feeling of accomplishment to get all that manure distributed and worked in. I am certain the garden will appreciate the extra love and care but in this climate it probably would have been better to do these chores in the fall. Unfortunately, that is the peak time for my craft business so there is really no other option. Now we will also see how nature provides diversity and balance by having ample heavy-feeding weeds appear. To the hoe we go! This year we purchased 17 dump truckloads of manure and here I am getting a workout distributing it around the garden. The beds shown just above were originally 8 in number but due to the kind donation from Kenaya Prabhu of a rototiller, we have expanded the beds and made four of them into one and on the other side just to the right of the tiller, we have made three beds into one. We had previously avoided going to larger beds because the garden is on a slight slope and we are concerned about erosion. However, we decided to go ahead with the expansion since the richness of the manure will expand the water retention capacity of the beds minimizing the risk of runoff.The beds, in the forefront of the picture above, were originally opened up using a linoleum knife and a spade. Boy, did the neighbours ever think we were crazy. We spent several weeks on it since it was so labour intensive and we hadn't the funds to purchase anything more evovled equipment-wise. I can tell you that we really appreciated the vegetables that year. Using only one-tenth of the time and energy, we could have easily purchased the same or greater quatity of veggies but frankly some things money just can't buy. Even during harvest season, the vegetables in the local market do not have either the eye or palate appeal as those grown personally and organically. Trishakti d.d. being the hard worker and nice devotee that she is, generally harvests the produce just before it goes into the pot for cooking and then offered to Srila Prabhupada and Sri Sri Gaur Nitai. It is a simple life but the quality of life derived from it is addictive.
The garden contains two other large beds, one just right of the photo above and the other along the driveway as shown below. This bed also has just received an ample top dressing of manure. It will be interesting to see the garden's reaction to such a generous helping of fertility. Since the manure wasn't very well composted, we are anticipating an onslaught of mullein, lamsbquarters and pigweed to name a few. Some of the benefits of composting are fewer weeds germinating since the composting process burns up the weed seed (if it is turned properly); the bulk of the compost is generally less than half of manure and compost is much more stable than manure with less volatization and leaching of nitrogen/ammonia. Translation: the good stuff stays in the garden bed for the veggies and losses to the air and ground water is reduced.
In this bed the manure was spread using the blade on the tractor, then disced and finally rototilled. It will be left to rot for another week or two and then tilled again. With our sandy loam soils, we must always be careful to not overwork the soil. Fortunately, due to this addition of ample organic matter, the risk of breaking down soil structure is reduced.
Shortly thereafter, the peas break ground and reach for the sky. We plant the variety Knight Peas after they were recommended to us by an Amish farmer during a farm inspection.
Since it is so early in the growing year, we are short of photos showing the full opulence of growing Gaur Nitai's garden. Uunfortunately, our scanner is down with software problems so we can't share photos of last year's bounty. But we will add on as they become available.We hope to build a new house this year and do some other capital improvements to the farm. The biggest challenge has been financial because the daily bills cannot be neglected resulting in so much of our time and energy being diverted to more immediate necessities. Yet Krsna has provided for us and has asked only a small token of effort in comparison to the mercy He has bestowed and we are very thankful.We do pray that the devotees do not find this presentation too vain on our part. Our motivation is to share the fact that we are city born and raised but are meeting with a small success in our endeavours to develop self-sufficiently. We are still light years away from our goals but every great endeavour starts with one's own first step up the gangplank of the Jaladutta. Only if we could have the same faith in the instructions of Srila Prabhupada as he did for his spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada. But we must struggle on with the resources at hand even though we are materially and spiritually impoverished. But by the grace of Lord Krsna and Srila Prabhupada, at least we know what is the right direction and take encouragement in the example of Madhavendra Puri who carried a heavy burden transporting sandalwood pulp for his Deity, Gopal. Perhaps one day, we can also realize that the struggle to serve the spiritual master and Lord Krsna is real happiness. We certainly aren't there yet but our endeavour to follow Srila Prabhupada's instructions on developing self-sufficiently has provided much satisfaction and insight. This in turn renews and increases our faith in the instructions of His Divine Grace. Jaya Srila Prabhupada! And this is why we have named our community, The Prabhupada-seva Rural Community . May we become an insignificant part of his legacy and glory.
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