Part 4: One year in Goa - Enjoying village life and gardening

Due to Corona pandemic, other than going to the market and taking short walks around the village, we stayed in the same Chandor village for the first six months. The lockdown restrictions started easing a bit after this time and we decided to slowly venture out of the village and explore Goa outside Chandor village. Read about the places we explored in Goa here.  These first six months gave us a lot of time to explore and enjoy the village life and experiment with gardening and a few other things. 

 Enjoying the village life

Even though we stayed only in Chandor village for the first six months, there were a lot of things happening in the village around us. We got a change to see some unique village activities like people harvesting coconuts and making oil out of them, people manually clearing the drinking water well before the start of the rainy season, people climbing trees to trim branches during the rainy season etc. 

The place we stayed was just a few minutes walk from a nearby river stream (Kushavati River) where we went often to relax and tried to teach Nora and Nina how to float and swim in water. There were also a few churches and hills nearby. We took walks to these hills and enjoyed views from them whenever we could. 

Other than that we spent this time walking to the market every 3 - 4 days, went out to spend time in the playground every evening, and just went with the flow of what each day brought for us. 

Kathi and Nora walking next to a Chapel on a nearby hill

Nora swinging on the vine of a nearby tree

Nora watching neighbourhood children play football

Kathi and Nora watching sunset at a spot close to our home

Nora and Nina inspecting the skeleton of an animal we found on a hike

Nora riding on Kathi's shoulder during our hike to a nearby hill

Nora and Nina playing in the water canal that brought water to nearby rice fields

Kathi and Nora watching people plant rice seedlings

Nora touching a baby crow that fell from the trees while they were being trimmed

Coconuts being harvested for making oil

Coconuts being prepared for drying

Coconuts drying before they were sent to mill to extract oil

Nora playing in the water emptied from the well while it was being cleaned

Well Cleaner getting into the well to remove silt and dirt from the bottom of the well

Nora enjoying an apple snack during a short walk in our neighbourhood

Sam and Nora taking a walk in our neighbourhood

Experimenting with gardening and other projects

Once we realized that we were going to stay in this village for at least a few more months without possibility of traveling to other places, we decided to experiment with a few things in our backyard. We took on projects like creating a vegetable garden, making a shed using coconut branches, make a sandbox for Nora and Nina to play, and a few other things. 

We wanted to understand and know more about how to grow our own food wherever we lived, and especially how to grow our own vegetables in different types of soils. When we stayed in Ibrahimpatnam, the soil was rocky and dry with almost no organic matter in it. We experimented with growing vegetables there and we had very little successes. Here, the soil was made up of clay. It was almost rock hard for the roots to grow when it was dry, and it retained all the moisture when it was wet without any drainage and the roots would rot in this type of soil. We saw online somewhere that we could test the texture of the soil by using a jar and water. We tested the soil and got a bit of insight into the percentages of clay, silt, and sand. We mixed the soil with a bit of coarse sand and organic matter to make the soil conducive for growing vegetables. We made beds and mixed the clay, coarse sand, dry leaves, and coconut shells. The beds turned out to be not as hard as the surrounding soil and we tried to grow a few vegetables and grains. We started tomatoes, chillies, okra, cilantro, string beans, green gram, bitter gourd and a few other vegetables. We planted some seeds directly in the soil, some in clay-sand balls, sprouted some in tissue papers, and the avocado plant in a bottle of water. Overall we learned a lot of things with these experiments and we were also able to get a few vegetables to eat for ourselves (even though it was just a handful). 

Testing the soil in a jar with water

Sam preparing the beds for the garden and Nora having fun with water in the beds

Sam and Nora making seedling balls

Beds

Coarse sand that was mixed with the clayey soil

Avocado plant growing from a seed

Custard Apple seeds sprouting in a wet tissue paper 

Java Plum seeds sprouting in wet tissue paper

Ash Gourd plants

Green Gram plants

Spinach and other seedlings

As the monsoon season started, the vegetable garden was under water most of the days and most of the vegetables did not survive. But after the monsoon slowed down, we reused the beds to plant a few vegetables and we could even harvest a few things. 

It was a general practice in the village that most of the organic waste was dropped next to the plants for plants and animals to use. As we had a bit of experience with composting our waste during our previous stays in Vietnam and India, we decided to create a compost area on the property and worked with our hosts to also have their organic waste (not fish or meat as animals would dig them out) added to the compost. In a few months, the compost turned into wonderful soil and it motivated our hosts to build another large compost area to continue to compost all their organic waste after we left. 

There were about 40 coconut trees on the property where we stayed and the dry coconut branches dropped almost everyday. We used this freely available leaves to do a few projects. One was to learn to weave with them and other was to build a shed to have shade for us during sunny days. We looked up online and we tried out a few patterns and made sheets that we used for covering our windows and also to cover the compost area that we created to compost our organic waste. 

We found spare bamboo stems on the property and we made a swing for Nora and Nina. After we hung it, Nora and Nina enjoyed swinging in it frequently. 

As part of Christmas celebrations, most of the churches in our area built Cribs using sand that they collected from nearby beaches. Once the festivities were over, the sand was left out. We collected sand from the church that was across from our home and created a sandbox. It turned out to be a wonderful thing as Nora and Nina got lost playing in the sand regularly. 

Seating area being prepared behind our home

Setting up the fence for the seating area

Fence around the seating area that we also used as a support for Bitter Gourd plants

Kathi's experiment with coconut leaves

Sam's experiment with coconut leaves

Sam and Nora making a broom out of coconut leaves

Coronavirus slowly entered our village as well, and it created a bit of panic in our surroundings. But with time people learned to live with it and it became more of a background thing where we had to take the precautions but it did not interrupt our life and projects too much.