When I imagined working on an organic farm in Nepal, I imagined long hours in the garden planting seeds and pulling weeds. While I did a bit of both, I hadn’t imagined the variety of tasks that would change daily during my time on the farm. Here are a few of my favorites!

The Buffalo Ladies

Meet Beatrix (Mrs. Buffalo) and Freddy (Miss Buffalo). As you can tell from the picture, it is a bitter cold winter here in Chitwan, so the buffalo ladies require extra care this time of year. Each morning and evening they receive food warmed over the fire. Beatrix gets boiled cornmeal with rice flour, mustard greens, and salt for added flavor. If she rejects this, we add more rice flour until it meets her high standards. Freddy is easier to please. She gets a nice mix of boiled cornmeal with wheat flour which she happily slurps up as soon as you put the bowl in front of her. Once finished with their entrées, they receive a generous portion of hay which (according to Tara) keeps them warm.

Either before or after their meal, the milking is done. Freddy gets the first go at the milk before Tara takes over. He washes the udder, dabs on some oil, then sets his hands to work. He is a professional. In no time at all, he has a full pail of milk (~1.5 liter), ready to be boiled over the fire.

Around noon when the fog lifts and the sun comes out, the ladies go out to the pasture. Taking them out the the pasture is no easy task, especially when it comes to Freddy. It wasn’t until my last month on the farm that I worked up the courage to take her on the 100 feet journey to the field. She goes slowly at first and has to be lightly prodded, but once she sees the field, she takes off. Imagine 250 pounds of baby buffalo making a beeline for the vegetable patch with you as the only anchor point. It’s a bit of an adrenaline rush to say the least.

Once in the field comes another round of hay before we muck the stalls. A couple times a week we go out to the field with baskets and sickles to collect grass for the buffalo ladies. Both love grass and it’s always a treat. Freddy kicks up her hind legs and huffs happily when we dump the grass in front of her. Beatrix, being the diva that she is, grunts angrily as if to say, that’s all you brought?

They are high maintenance, but the buffalo milk, paneer (cheese), and ghee (something better than butter) make it all worthwhile!

Climbing the Bean Tree

For the last month we’ve been harvesting simi beans from the vine that goes up the tree just outside the buffalo pen. I quickly gained a reputation as a good tree climber and scaled the tree at least once a week in search of ripe beans. I figured out the best branches and the spots where the beans grew the thickest. I would fill every pocket (and sometimes my sports bra) with beans before throwing the rest down to where someone would wait with a bucket. Although it made Anjana & Tara nervous, I loved scaling high into the tree! I never worried about falling until after I was safely on the ground. Harvesting beans was my all-time favorite chore. As an added bonus, that night we would have curried green beans which is my all-time favorite vegetable!

Grinding the Dahl

When you eat dahl bhat (rice & lentils) every day, you end up going through a lot of lentils! In order to cook quickly, therefore using less gas, the lentils need to be ground. Every three weeks or so, we would venture over to the neighbors with a few kilograms of whole beans. The neighbors own a grinding stone, built right into their front porch. It often became a social event with many local women gathering around to chatter in fast Nepali while we turned the grinding stone that split the lentils. For me, it became a great arm workout… but only for my right arm.

Working in the Garden

Although the Adhikari’s live on a farm, they don’t farm for a living. Like many of their neighbors, their gardens only sustain their family (and volunteers). We would occasionally pull weeds and plant seasonal vegetables like lettuce and cauliflower, but it wasn’t the focus of our work on the farm. We actually spent more time working in Anjana’s flower gardens than in the veggie patch. We built a front garden and later a garden along the fence that we made out of recycled plastic bottles. Slowly, the gardens begin to fill with plants Anjana bought, found, or received from friends. Over the course of two months I watched the front yard turn from a patch of dirt to a little flower garden, created by volunteers, nourished by the sun, and cared for by Anjana.

The Fish Pond

The fish were low maintenance. They resided in the small pond across the dirt road from the house. Sometime Tara would run to the local butcher to get chicken entrails (to my surprise, the fish were carnivorous), but aside from that, they were self-sufficient. Then there came the day of the great fish harvest, two weeks after the great honey harvest! There was a Hindu holiday (one of many) and people celebrated by eating fish for this particular holiday.

The day of the harvest we were over at the neighbor’s house early to get the generator pump that would drain the pond. After five hours the pond was drained enough for Tara and another neighbor to go out and start netting fish. Our job as volunteers was to wade into to mucky water and corral the fish toward the net. The mud seeped up over our ankles and we had to keep moving to prevent getting stuck. All the while, a crowd gathered around the pond to watch to whole process. Neighbors came and went with bags full of fish to take home and fry up for dinner.

Once we had collected a sufficient number of fish for the village and the family, we went inside for a marvelous fish feast. Every part was delicious, from head to tail! After dinner, we got to work scraping and gutting the fish. My job was snapping back the head and removing the gills. Prior to that day, touching fish had made me a bit squeamish. I can proudly say that after the great fish harvest, fish are no longer a problem for me!

Drinking Tea

Once all our work is done, we drink masala tea. The perfect start and end to every day on the farm in Nepal!