Acres Wild TM

BOTTOM PANEL                 RIGHT PANEL

2 Minute PowerPoint presentation of Acres Wild.

Acres Wild is our 22 acre, family-run organic farm in Coonoor town which is a small hill station (altitude 6000 ft) in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu state in South India. This area is marked as The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve because it contains a set of unique ecosystems rich in biodiversity such as medicinal plants, traditional landraces or crops and their wild relatives, ancient races of domestic animals and indigenous people.

Our goal at Acres Wild farm is to shape an eco-friendly, holistic and self-sustaining life style for ourselves and share this experience with others.

We hope to adhere to the following principles at our farm.

For a start - NO CHEMICALS.  Second - make efforts to increase diversity of plants and trees in the farm, with a stress on replanting a lot of the local strains of plants and trees that had been cleared over the years by earlier land owners. Third is to keep tillage to a minimum.

Homemade, gourmet cheese is a prime focus of our activities at Acres Wild farm and we feel good that we have put Coonoor on the map for reviving gourmet cheesemaking in the Nilgiris.   Acres Wild Cheese is real cheese and not made like the processed cheese we get in the market. To make real cheese we started with cows with the idea of getting reliable, quality milk for the cheese and getting gobar (cow dung) as a fertiliser and for a gobar gas plant to generate cooking gas. Here is direct link to The Hindu article on cheesemaking at Acres Wild farm.

Acres Wild Farmhouse

For gourmet cheese the better the milk the better the cheese. To get the best possible milk we must feed the cows meadow grass as much as possible. We have planted half an acre of napier grass (more for the bulk) as a backup. Then we must plant meadow grass as that is better for the cow and milk production. We also grow a water fern called azolla, that is a supplement feed for cows. Azolla is grown in shallow ponds.

Cheese Cottage

Cows means lots of gobar (cow dung) so next we built a gobar gas plant that we have used since 2005. We went for a fixed dome design that takes care of about 80 per cent of our cooking needs. This has encouraged us to build 2 more gobar gas plants, each of double the capacity of the first one, and which will take all the toilet output too.

Next we added hens and now the population of 50 hens is enough to give us all the farm eggs we need.

We started with 5 goats.  Later we have added another 23 goats and kids.

We have been constantly planting new trees of all varieties - pear, peach, plum, avocado, silver oak and local shola trees.  Our nursery is taking shape for starting the plants.  Also bought a bunch of herb plants like Fennel, Rosemary, thyme etc. Fennel is the main ingredient in the herb soft cheese.

We have two natural ponds that will, hopefully, get the native animals and birds back. In one pond we have stocked over 3000 carp fish.

We have introduced about a 100 ducks to the pond ecosystem. Duck excreta is great for fish - and why not. Also introduced 6 geese to Pond No 1. They loved it and their shed is just near it. 3 gosling born are now adults and adapting well to the habitat.

The guinea fowl have been moved to the farm too and seem to be doing ok and not interested in running away.

Since August 2006, a family of elephants started coming up from lower down the hill, mainly for water They seem to be interested in visiting annually. We later discovered that this was happening in other places all over Tamil Nadu. Some say their normal corridor was disturbed. They damaged our small house here and pulled down a few pear trees..... some kind of protest that we will soon learn more about.

More visual ways to explore our site are thru the Photo Gallery and the Site Map.

We log our key events and experiences in the Acres Wild Farm Blog.  Please read our Site Manual before you venture into sections of our website which have a special function like Farm Blog, Acres Forum, Acres Wiki etc.

We would love your feedback so do sign the Acres Wild Farm Guestbook.

'Quotes Page' has some quotes relevant to our thoughts at Acres Wild.

AND very important - our website has lots of info and the easiest way to find it is to use the 'Search' box which is in the left column of each page. Try it. You will find things you did not see before.

Mansoor, Tina, Zayn and Pablo Khan.

Below is a random entry from our Guestbook. It changes each time you reload this page.  

Vivek Jayan

Knock Knock..... How did you hear about us? -Google Search 23 October 2008 05:55pm - United Arab emirates