KOTTAKKAL: At a time when large swathes of farmlands are being converted into housing plots, a bunch of girls from a polytechnic at Kottakkal transformed a sprawling barren land into fertile field.
The NSS unit of the Government Women’s Polytechnic College took up the tools to turn the overgrown, barren field, which had remained neglected for more than 10 years, into a vegetable farm.
“Various private parties had owned this land in the past. We never thought we could transform such a big strip of unfit land into a fertile ground. We sweated our guts out to make this a usable land,” said Anushree M, the NSS secretary at the college.
Sown over the 11-acre patch are the seeds of pumpkin, spinach, cucumber, snake gourd, bitter gourd, brinjal, beans and chilly. When fully grown, this once-barren land will be a green park filled with various crops. “The team worked for more than a week to make the land fertile. It was not an easy job.
A major portion of the area was covered with weeds. Some trees had sprung up on the land which we cut off,” said NSS project coordinator Mohammed Ashraf. He said officials of the Agriculture Department and Puthuparambu panchayat helped them achieve the goal.
The agriculture office distributed seeds to the students. “We sought instructions from the farmers too. It was indeed a collective effort. But the students took the interest and they spent their entire holidays cutting wood, plucking out the weeds and tilling the land,” he said.
The students are hoping for the first harvest in a month. The vegetables will be distributed to various shops for a nominal price through panchayat.