India: This mother turned into an urban farmer to provide chemical-free food to her children
Following the heart surgery of her six-month-old infant, Subhashree Santhya started growing vegetables in the balcony of her flat in Navi Mumbai. Now, she’s an urban farmer with a one-acre farm and her own brand of traditional porridge mix.
By Rekha Balakrishnan
Her story
December 07, 2022
Excerpt:
She decided to take a break from her career to focus on this new direction in her life. Unaware of any kind of agricultural practices, Santhya started learning on her own, starting with basic spinach, tomatoes, okra, and white pumpkin.
“I made my own fertiliser by using kitchen waste, bought earthworms from the nearby nursery, and started making my own compost,” she says.
This led to a WhatsApp group with mothers in the same building and nearby apartments who also wanted to grow their own vegetables. She decided to use money she had kept aside to buy a flat in Navi Mumbai to buy a farm, half-an-hour away from her home, in Kalapur, where most of the work is now being done.
Santhya pans the phone camera to her balcony to show where it all began. There are bushes of spinach and other vegetables growing in pots. Though the spinach grown is native to Tamil Nadu, she has managed to grow them with the help of fertilisers and proper soil care.
