A farmhouse near Chennai

Most upper-middle-class and rich people invariably own a large farmhouse, generally about one or two hours drive away from their current residences in Chennai. From the eighties till recently, most of the salaried segment and aspiring middle-class people were content to own a flat in an apartment complex. However, of late, most of the salaried segment and aspiring middle-class people currently living out of multi-storied apartment complexes in Chennai have also realized the importance of owning a farmhouse. Unlike any other residential property, a farmhouse isn’t just a piece of land with a building and a few trees. A plot of land with trees, crops, gardens, ponds, cows, goats, sheep, hens, ducks, geese etc on it becomes our own private paradise on earth. Simply put, one is truly settled in life only when one has a farmhouse near Chennai that he/she can retire to.

Modern farmouse for organic food

A couple of generations back, everybody’s second occupation was farming. One would have been a teacher, a bank clerk, a postmaster, a tailor or a trader by profession or even a student or a housewife, but they still used to grow their own organic food and led a healthier life. Everybody lived on a farmhouse style house even if they did not call it a farmhouse. Come to think of it, every household used to have some parcel of land around their house in which they will have a couple of milch animals providing the family with milk and manure, a score of poultry offering the family eggs and chicken and a green patch yielding fresh vegetables, fruits and greens for self-consumption. Since the size of farming operations was small and the focus was on self-consumption, there was little use for chemical-based fertilizers or pesticides. Safe food for the family was the only mantra.