So this is my first blog update from our farm. :)
Far away from the hustle and bustle of city life, perched on a secluded hilltop overlooking the idyllic hamlet of Neihbawih below, surrounded by a sea of calm and solitude, that is where I sat down as I penned down my thoughts for this blog update.
This is a land still undefiled by mankind's relentless pursuit of modernization and industrialization, a land where the nettlesome noises of vehicular horns and mechanic clatters of heavy machineries are replaced by the rhythmic chirpings of midnight crickets and melodic tweets of morning swallows. A land covered by untrodden thick forests or neatly ploughed terrace farms displaying rows of vegetable plantations.
As we had recently started the renovation of our old farmhouse along with other farm related projects, I found myself spending more and more nights at our farm.
Much as I love the natural beauty and charm of living in the farm, I must confess though, it gets super boring at night. :D
So a typical day in the farm goes like this. I wake up at around 5 AM because I love watching the morning sun shimmering over the mist covered mountains, I love observing the way the first sunrays would glitter across the morning dews, and finally, I love taking a deep breath and inhaling that fresh and pure mountain air. Ahhh, bliss!
And then the whole day I would be busy doing various farm chores. Our hired hands do most of the heavy work like digging foundation holes and clearing boulders, while I do the light work like spraying weedicides and watering our mustard leaves (it is of utmost importance not to mix up the two! :D ). There are more than enough tasks to keep me busy the entire day.
Around 5 PM, it starts to get dark and our helpers go home. By 6:30 PM we are done with dinner and everything is safely locked up. After that, there is absolutely nothing else to do, lolz.
I talked earlier about how wonderful it is to live away from civilization. Well, it is TOO far away from civilization, so mobile network is extremely bad. I have to climb the highest part of our farm to get bits and parts of cellular reception, and it is dangerous to go there after dark because of snakes and... ghosts :P And so, I can't even use my phone to check WhatsApp messages or FB timeline after dinner. This will especially be tougher for people suffering from FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out.
We don't have a TV either because there is no cable service in this area. There may be a few things to do and pass the time with had I been staying here with my friends, but with my companions being my mom, nieces and maid, those things are out of the question :D And so my only form of entertainment in the night before I sleep is to read a novel, which I have been doing for some time now.
Recently, I thought, what the heck, I'm not going to be able to blog for a long time if I keep staying in the farm, and so I bought a couple of new computer parts like a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse set, UPS etc and kept half of them at the farm. And so, all I had to do was take only just my CPU to the farm and then back to home again when we return, hence minimizing my burden.
Smart move, huh? Here is my farm setup, what do you think? :)
For internet, I borrowed my sister's JioFy dongle.
The network is still pretty bad even with that, but that's ok as I'm already prepared for a setback. Worse comes to worst, I'll just write my blog update on a Word document on my newly setup farm computer (for which I don't need internet), copy that document to my phone, climb up the hilltop where there is mobile data network coverage and simply update my blog from there. Yeah it is quite a roundabout, but it works, as you can see from this update. :)
I guess this is how I'll be updating most of my new blog updates from now on...
And the funniest thing is, THIS is exactly how I used to update my blog when I first started blogging! I've been blogging from 2004, and back then, mobile internet was unheard of (the closest we had to mobile internet back then was WAP, Wireless Application Protocol, not to be confused with that "song" by Cardi B) and most of us couldn't afford an internet connection at home as well, and so I spent at least the next 5 years of blogging by writing on my home PC, copying that document to a pendrive, and then rushing to a nearby Cyber Cafe to update my blog with that file, lolz.
It's so ironic because I have come in full circles again. :D
I have a lot of interesting tales to share with you about my farm experience, which I will in the coming days. From chasing rats in the middle of the night because they refused to let me sleep, to dismantling a honeycomb that bees happily constructed between our toilet walls, the exploits are endless.
So do stay tuned for more as I'll bring to you the adventures of the accidental farmboy. :D
Cheers everyone, until next post.
