Farming was thought to be a retirement activity for us, just couple of years back…But things changed when a few close friends joined together and started exploring the possibilities of a farm life !
Yes, we are a group of IT folks in Bangalore, wanted to try something different, other than IT ( for a change 
Idea was to set up a farm where we can escape to, with our families, in the weekends, enjoy and come back on Sunday evening with some fresh vegetables, milk, egg and other farm produces !
We thought that it is a much sweeter idea than investing in Mahindra Holidays or Country club where in our money is used to build their asset !
At first, it was endless research on Dairy farming. That’s how, a few good active forums like this, opened up in front of us. Forums and the comments were very helpful . To get a real feel of things, we visited several farms like NDRI , Christ College’s farm on Mysore road with 500 cows, Oxygen Acres near Mysore, a farm in Ooty, one in Kerala, and the huge farm in Mathigiri, Hosur. Everytime, we learned some things , unlearned many things… atleast weekends were very interesting with all these trips…
We started making a plan, more like a mind map, using Google Drawing… This helps us to do research on multiple things in parallel, instead of getting stuck with one area…Our research topics included Farm Land, Cow selection, Breeding , Animal Nutrition, Housing / Shed, Silage preparation, Milk parlors, Calf management, Diseases, Variety of grasses - pros and cons, Milk handling / Clean processing, Organic farming, Packaging, Logistics, Marketing, Financials / Cost sheet and many more…
We wanted to see a pure HF - as pure as possible- just out of curiosity, after we heard that most cows we see on the road with black and white patches are just 50% blood level or less.
Once we drove for hours near Krishnagiri with a broker, to see a pure HF !
Next week, we found another one just behind NDRI, Bangalore -in a poorly maintained cow shed with 12 cows, couple of them with high HF blood level ( 80% + ) . Atleast, we can differentiate them with looks now
Experts told us not to go for pure HF in the beginning. There are reasons which I will explain in later posts…
It is already more than 2 years… so many stories to post… And it is past midnight in Bangalore now…
( Those who are enthusiastic about the current state of the farm : We bought a beautiful piece of farm land , next to a forest, very near to Bangalore ( 50 kms from E.City ) and dug a bore which yielded 4 inch water. Things are moving much faster now )
Wait for future posts… Hope this helps some another group just the same way as the old discussions helped us or even we can get more like-minded families to join us in this endeavor !!! Journey has just begun.