The couple has received the Krishi Pandit Award given by the Department of Agriculture to individuals for best farming practices.Meet Vivek and Juli, a couple who started doing organic farming in Mysore in 1986 and have today built a unique example of sustainable living.About 30 years ago, Juli and Vivek Cariappa, a young couple from Delhi, travelled to Birwal village of Heggadadevana Kote taluka in Mysore district of Karnataka. They bought a small piece of land there and started farming. Juli was 20 at the time and Vivek was 21. He had studied economics and she had a degree in sociology.Both of them quit their jobs at a garment export company and decided to take the leap of faith – one that has now turned into a beautiful story of adventure, sustainability, green living, and lots of love.
“For me, it was about taking control of my life,” says Juli . They left Delhi in 1985 and went to a remote area located about 50 km south of Mysore.At the time, there were only three busses plying on that route and there they were – two people with a dream, starting from scratch. There was no phone or electricity where they lived for about two years and even their closest neighbours were 3 km away.
The couple didn’t know much about agriculture at the time and they had to learn on the field itself.“First we had to unlearn everything we had learnt in school because that was completely irrelevant to what we wanted to do. We were just learning to survive in an environment that was completely different from the one we grew up in, to face ourselves and our shortcomings, and to grow enough food just for ourselves – that was a big task the first couple of years,” says Juli, adding that they were fortunate to receive a small loan from their parents to help sustain them since they didn’t have any savings.
Today, they have a farm named Krac-A-Dawna, spread over an area of 40 acres. On it they grow pretty much everything they need to live – grains, oilseeds, eggs, food, fibre, spices, compost, cotton, paddy, millets, sugarcane, vegetables, etc.Except for a few “luxury items” like tea, they don’t need much from the outside world. They also cook food using biogas. Three decades on, it’s not just the two of them in the wilderness. Juli and Vivek have two sons, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law.Their children were home-schooled and they are also interested in farming and animal husbandry.As for Vivek, his advice to the present generation is just “to slow down, take it easy, and enjoy life because life is all about learning, a few successes and lots of failure.”.........
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