Looking for Home: Sun Up to Sun Down

I’ve been at the farm here at Kapan for about a month, and I’ve gotten into a sort of routine. Here’s what a typical day looks like.

I wake up around six, just as the sun is starting to rise, and do an hour of yoga. Tea (green, black, or with our own buffalo milk) is served around seven, and we start working. In the morning, the main task is harvesting and packaging vegetables to be sent to the market. We do this every morning, in addition to other tasks that need to get done. We just transplanted cauliflower and broccoli on the former rice terraces, so I’ve been watering them every morning for about a week now. There are dozens of beds of the transplants, so it usually takes me until the first meal to finish.

In Nepal, we run on a two meal system. After tea (and maybe some fruit) the first meal is eaten around nine or ten. A typical Nepali meal consists of dal (lentil soup) bhat (rice) tarkari (veggies, usually cooked into a curry). With a little bit of spicy achar (pickle) on the side, this is a meal I never get tired of.

After eating it’s back to work. Weeding, cutting grass to feed the animals, digging beds, building/repairing structures, collecting firewood, tilling soil, transplanting, the list goes on. We work until the sun goes down. At around one or two we take a break and take tea with a snack, (khaja) usually of chiura (beaten rice). As it starts to get dark we bring the animals back in and put tools away. Now is also a good time to water plants.

After dark I wash up and then start to help in the kitchen. The farm house also serves as a restaurant/bar, with almost all of the items being grown/produced/fermented on the farm itself. I’ve been helping with cooking and preparing dishes, as well as serving guests. The spots to sit and eat/drink are placed throughout the farm, making for a unique (and pretty cool) experience for diners.

At the end of the day, around seven or eight, we eat dinner (dal, bhat, tarkari). After cleaning up we hang around for a bit, maybe to play cards or just generally kick it, and then I go back to my room. It’s lights out for me around ten, and then after a good night’s sleep I'm up again with the sun.