For months, I genuinely believed my farm was heading in the right direction.
For about three months, we harvested vegetables every week.
The first six months had been hard. There wasn't much to harvest. Almost everything involved trial and error. But slowly, things started changing.
The farm finally felt alive.
I thought this was it.
I thought nature had started taking over.
Then the brutal summer arrived.
Within weeks, that confidence disappeared.
The soil dried much faster than I expected. Vegetable production dropped sharply. Plants that had looked healthy suddenly began struggling. Every weakness in the farm became visible.
It took me a while to realize that summer hadn't exposed a weakness in my farm or crops.
It had exposed a weakness in the way I understood regenerative farming.
After the summer, I spent weeks reading, revisiting my assumptions, observing my own land and asking myself one uncomfortable question.
Am I actually following the right regenerative farming practices?
On paper, the answer felt like yes.
I wasn't using chemical fertilizers.
I wasn't using pesticides.
I wasn't spraying herbicides.
I was growing multiple crops instead of monocropping.
So why didn't the farm feel like something that was actually regenerating?
Then it clicked.
I had been defining regeneration by everything I wasn't doing.
I wasn't adding chemicals.
I wasn't forcing nature.
I wasn't disturbing the soil much.
But I also wasn't actively rebuilding anything.
I wasn't rebuilding the soil.
I wasn't rebuilding biodiversity.
I wasn't rebuilding the farm's ability to produce its own biomass.
I wasn't rebuilding a microclimate.
I had assumed that if I simply stepped aside...
...nature would do the rest.
I had stopped harming nature.
I hadn't yet started rebuilding it.
That single realization changed almost every decision I'm making on the farm today.
Once I started looking at the nature through that lens, one pattern kept appearing everywhere I looked.
Nature is always producing biomass.
Nature rarely leaves soil exposed.
Nature creates shade before demanding productivity.
Nature builds soil before it builds abundance.
Ecosystems don't appear simply because we stop using chemicals.
They have to be intentionally built.
They need structure.
Tall trees. Small trees. Shrubs. Ground covers. Living roots. Continuous biomass. Leaf litter. Birds. Bees. Butterflies. Insects. Shade. Windbreaks. A cooler microclimate.
Most importantly, they need time.
None of those things produce immediate income.
But every one of them quietly makes farming easier.
That realization completely changed how I'm working on the farm.
I no longer think of trees as crops.
I think of them as infrastructure.
Windbreaks are infrastructure.
Shade is infrastructure.
Leaf litter is infrastructure.
Bird habitat is infrastructure.
Even a patch of land dedicated entirely to producing biomass is infrastructure.
One corner of my farm was full of rocks. For over a year, it was practically unusable. My first instinct was always to figure out how to grow crops there. Today, I don't think that way anymore. That area has become what I call the Biomass Factory.
Its purpose isn't to produce food.
Its purpose is to produce the one thing my farm currently lacks the most—organic matter.
We'll grow Jowar, Bajra, Cowpea and Horsegram there. Most of it will be cut and left where it grows. Some of it will be moved to young trees, nursery beds and vegetable plots.
It won't directly generate income.
Its job is to feed the rest of the farm.
The same thinking now influences the entire layout of the farm.
I've planted living fences around the boundaries. Behind them are support trees, biomass trees and fruit trees. Internal tree strips are slowly taking shape. Another tree strip will be planted this monsoon. We're building water-holding features. Raising hundreds of nursery plants. Trying to create enough biomass so that, one day, the farm can produce most of its own mulch.
Vegetables haven't disappeared from the plan.
They're still the goal.
The difference is that I no longer think vegetables come first.
First comes rebuilding nature.
Everything else grows from there.
If you visited the farm today, you probably wouldn't be very impressed.
There are gaps where trees didn't survive.
The banana plantation is struggling.
Some areas still have bare soil.
The irrigation system is still evolving.
One entire section of the farm is intentionally growing biomass instead of food.
In many ways, the farm still looks unfinished.
That's because it is.
I'm not forcing yields and returns this year.
I'm trying to rebuild nature on this piece of land.
I believe the farm will emerge from that process.
When I think about the future, I don't imagine perfectly straight rows of vegetables.
I imagine walking through the gate into a place that feels alive.
Tall trees.
Smaller trees beneath them.
Birds nesting.
Bees moving from flower to flower.
Butterflies everywhere.
Dense canopy in places.
Vegetables thriving under a cooler microclimate.
Soil that stays cool even after weeks without rain.
Minimal irrigation.
A farm where I rely on the ecosystem to grow vegetables, fruits and everything else the farm produces.
I am not building a vegetable factory.
I am not building a paddy factory.
I want a thriving ecosystem that happens to produce food.
I still have a lot to learn. I won't be surprised if some of today's ideas eventually prove to be incomplete or even wrong.
Now I think my job is to rebuild the conditions that allow nature to do the rest.