End of Year Report December 2025 and Happy New Year!
The Paddy harvest at the end of 2024 of the BB11 hybrid paddy and the 2 fields of old style Baran Phul paddy that we sowed in 2024 and harvested by December 2024 was sold in March 2025 without processing at Rs 18 per kilo. Anandi was disappointed that she had not been able to get a buyer for organic rice, and that she had to sell the paddy at normal local market rates, and she resolved to do better in 2025. The rabi crop of kidney beans and peas in 2025 was experimental and sadly did not do well, but the lentil and flax seeds made up for those failures to a small extent.
The hybrid BB11 harvest
Syntropic farming depends on carbon and millions of micro organisms in the soil, it needs biomass, but our biomass is only slowly being added at the rate we would like. We persevered with organic farming and in June 2025 Anandi made a new plan for 2026 to 2029 which would involve renewed efforts to fence the food forests to try and keep our biomass protected from goats and cows and people collecting firewood. We plan to do a goat and cow count for the village, set up a pound at our Kharoor, and grow our own fodder and fuel to supply the villagers with fodder and fuel on condition that they bring the goats and cows in the morning and take them home in the evening and otherwise stay off the fields. A big idea, but nothing that is not urgently needed, and everyone knows it.
We will build a pound and supply fodder and fuel wood for goats and cows and their owners as long as they stay off the fields in Baharbari
Basically syntropic farming in Baharwari must be a social endevour that involves reeducating the entire village on the need for massively stepping up biomass production. We made a plan to grow a nursery concentrating on lemons and that lemons would be both a fence and a crop. Since then the plan has been improved by Vivek.
Kamalsari was ploughed between the trees, new Papaya and Lemon was planted in new rows between the trees, vegetables between the Papayas and Lemons, and Lemons and Jalebi, the thorny Pithecellobium dulce was planted to grow into a live fence inside the new barbed wire fencing. The Kachnar trees are doing really well.
Vegetables and tree saplings are raised in the nursery and transplanted to the fields.
During the course of the end of the rabi season in 2025 some time Gurudev met up with Harsh Vardhan in the village Bheema on the other side of the road up North from Jokihat, and got a new Jeev Amrut recipe from him for the Baran Phul. So for the 2025 paddy season in June we prepared a nusery bed for only Baran Phul and even had to get some extra seedlings from Harsh Vardhan in Bheema, and from July to November 2025 grew our Baran Phul with plenty of Jeev Amrut, which is basically an Indigenous Micro Organism recipe for culturing them in dung and urine. We planted out the seedlings with more hope not only of getting a good yield but also of perhaps being able to market it, possibly through Harsh Vardhan’s organic farming network that he is setting up for Araria District, at a reasonable rate. Maybe at Rs 120 per kilo instead of 18, which would be great, or indeed through our own efforts with a new webshop. We have harvested now, the paddy is drying, we will see when to mill it and when to sell it. We will weigh it all soon, but we may have harvested at least 20 quintals of paddy in total this year, down from 31.6 quintals last year, but very good considering all but two small plots were sown with the lovely scented Baran Phul this year which has a lower yield than BB11 but is so much more delicious.
Baran Phul Paddy harvested at Madhumakkhi Farm in December 2025
Whilst the paddy was growing Anandi ordered a huller from Alto Precision Machines in Bangalore. We now have a huller that gives us wonderful unpolished rice. Everyone knows the benefits of unpolished rice. But in Araria District there is not a single huller that does not remove the bran along with the husk. Of course the local people know that parboiling does retain some of the bran on the grain and the goodness of the grain is preserved after the hulling, so they do parboiling. But only some still do. Mostly others just take their crop straight to the huller who polishes away all the bran. And for rice lovers in the village and elsewhere who prefer the softer feel of unboiled rice, a huller that does not polish is a must. The harvest took the entire month of November 2025 and part of December. By the time the harvest was over the huller was running. We need not go into the details of the transport damage and other failures from the manufacturer side which we had to contend with. We spent a week with the fabricator fixing the stand, the chute of the huller, the hoppers are being replaced and should arrive soon. But even with the bent hoppers we had a successful run with very dry paddy from last year which Harsh brought for milling. Vivek’s video of Harsh and Anandi exchanging thoughts on the success of this first milling will be uploaded soon. Watch this space!
Polished Baran Phul paddy hulled in December 2025 on our new huller and polished for making the polished Baran Phul rice that is enjoyed by many as a sweet Khir. It was wet, this was a test. It worked but it needed three passes and the last husk was only removed during polishing.
Bran. Commercial pressures or other bad habits mean this lovely bran is removed from paddy when it is husked and polished by hullers in Araria District. Ours is the first huller in the District that does not remove this precious bran from the rice grain.
From October 1st Vivek Thakur M.Sc. Forestry from Gurdaspur, Punjab, joined us as project manager. From him Anandi learnt that in Punjab a farmer gets a combine harvester to cut and thresh one acre of paddy in 1 hour, and the paddy is sold, and the cash is in the farmer’s hands, within 48 hours after delivery to the mandi. Well, we may not have combine harvesters in Baharbari but we do have JCBs. 2025 is ending on a literal high, and 2026 will start on a high indeed: we are filling up a empty hole that was always half full of water, neither a pond nor not a pond, and soon we will have reclaimed half an acre highland along the main road in Baharbari just opposite the power plant. We will stand on new high ground ready to start the dairy. The new site will be fenced and will include the vermicomposting, the dairy, dairy worker accommodation and the Madhumakkhi Farm Director’s house, i.e. Vivek’s new residence and space for guests. Madhumakkhi Farm will be registered as a section 8 company with Vivek and Gurudev as the Directors in the New Year and another Director may join once he has thought about it. Www.madhumakkhifarm.com will have an online farmshop.
In short, Madhumakkhi Farm is up and running and syntropic farming may finally take hold in Baharbari. We are on track for some excellent production of fodder in this rabi season, the attractor plants to bring the ladybirds to eat the aphids that are due to appear in the next month are in the nursery ready for planting out in a few weeks, and we have plenty of Napier grass already in the ground and more to come on Charbighya where, in the 2026 kharif season, will see a new experiment in syntropic farming for low lands and high lands in Baharbari.
Ladybird
Thank you to the team of Julo, Manjita, Radha, Parvati, Mandodari and Gurudev and their families for making Madhumakkhi Farm a reality. Once we are established our example will surely spread in the village. Thanks to Vivek for starting their training in syntropic farming with such gusto. Happy New Year!
Lucy has been very helpful trying to do the accounts for this multifaceted organisation and is also now a trustee of DESI Power Foundation, I wish her all the best in her work in the coming year!
Santhiya P has been doing an excellent job drawing and redrawing structures that will be built this year, investigating building with bamboo, fly ash bricks and other materials that try and tick all the sustainability boxes. Thank you for your contributions and all the best for 2026 Santhiya!
And Hari Sharan is slowly bringing together his plan for the micro grid in Baharbari that will see the 11 kW Ankur gasifier repaired, the 32 kW Netpro gasifier rebuilt, the solar power done neatly on GI sheets or fibre chaddar roofing, with thatch grass to insulate the roofs from the cold of winter and the heat of summer, and many other aspects of energy planning that must also address the dire need for fuel for cooking, fodder for livestock and last but not least electricity for sustainable quantities of irrigation water – in keeping with annual groundwater recharge levels -, for running an 19 kW electric tractor, a 4 kW 3 wheeler for transporting milk and other produce, and a 0.5 kW electric two wheeler, let alone the rice huller plus the micro enterprises that will be restarted in the new year to produce cattle feed. Gurudev Malakar, in charge of energy, will have his hands full. Happy New Year Hari!
2026 promises to be full of joy and lots of new learning, something that Vivek Thakur, and Hari Sharan and Anandi will be doing for the team and their families and extended community in Baharbari. In the case of Vivek he will do it directly on the ground, living and working in Baharbari, and Hari and Anandi and Santhiya will continue doing it by internet calling.
Happy New Year to the DESI Power Foundation Family for 2026!
Everything needs power from the rice mill to the tractor to the smallest fan for winnowing
