After the manure comes out of the stables and the toilets and makes its fine dark piles on the fields– after the canals are repaired and the fallen terrace walls are rebuilt– after the sun shines in the high places, melts the ice, and frees the water running down from the glaciers– after the long, long patient stillness of winter, the season comes around to plowing time again.
For the last few years — and maybe for the first time in more than a thousand years — many of the fields in Tar Village went unplowed. Many of the elders who cared for the lands for so long have grown old now; many have grown ill, and the vast work of inviting life up from the earth again became simply too much for them to carry. Most of their children have found jobs in Leh city, and their grandchildren are in schools there now. But this year there are changes stirring; this year some people are speaking together about revitalizing the village’s heart. They want to invite tourists here to experience homestays, and so make village-based livelihoods more viable for the Tarpa. They want to rebuild Tar’s school. And they want to green the land again.
And so, just before the new moon of the third month of the Tibetan calendar, we receive our first invitation to plow Kargopa’s fields. “Skyot ley, ju ju–” respectfully, please come– and so, the season begins.
2025
Late snow and full bloom created shining white above and below in afternoon light like this.
Planting potatoes with Drakchanpa:
The village from above, plowing underway. These years are lean on human beings, animals, and manure.
Also, there are three new homes in Tar under construction. The growing road is making Tar more accessible, and there is reason to believe some more Tarpa will be moving back.
2024
a full walk through plowing - 2023
Two days before a field is plowed a group of people, usually women, gather to bring the water. Using the remnants of canals and stones from the previous years, we work together to invite water over the fields.
First, water fills the main canal. Using stones, cloth, and earth, we open and close gates to flood each part of the field in turn. Padma Itses is with us, watching our hands and tools, using her own small shovel to guide channels of water to the still-dry patches of soil. Learning the work, learning a way with the water, and with the transformation it brings about.
Karpo nakpo gyurs, light becomes dark as water moves over the surface of the soil and saturates the earth.
Nyima nyirtse– in the hour when the sun descends the cliff faces, lighting the stone orange and gold, and before it crosses the horizon, we gather for lut damches, to spread manure over the fields that will be plowed that day. Everyone in the village who is able comes, not only the plowing team, and some mornings there are eighteen or twenty of us working together. Just after sunrise we break for tea, then finish the pile in the sweet warmth of the early morning.
Lut spaced neatly on the field
Lut ldatches
When the giant lut pile is finished, we spread the manure thinly over the soil. It seems like a simple action, but to watch the grandmothers is to understand a particular kind of magic, perfect facility with a given tool. We remember our first plowing days in Thakmachik eight years ago, and the excellence of a grandmother named Samstan Dolma. Jason, watching in wonder, asked her how she had gotten so skillful– she replied, simply, “I’m old!”
After manure work is complete everyone returns home to wash up and care for their animals. I have no cow, and I love this time; a breath of solitude and quiet in the sunshine, in between waves of community work and guest-rite. Then we go to the hosting house for breakfast. In Tar we always begin with kolak, a kneaded dough of barley and butter tea, with fresh yogurt and a chutney made of young herbs. Then comes a course of thukpa, a hearty soup of whole wheat noodles, turnips, and greens.
When everyone has eaten well, members of the house bring a pitcher of chang, local beer; sngampe, roasted barley flour; shukpa, dry cedar, put down on coals from the hearth; and a stack of flat breads blessed with butter, yal. The youngest man of the house dips a branch of cedar or an ear of barley or wheat into the chang three times, flicking the liquid into the air and saying “chot!” offering it to the Tab-lha, spirit of the hearth. He breaks off three tiny pieces of bread and throws them up, then three pinches of flour.
In some houses they still practice basi skuches; the youngest man then has his face smeared with barley dough and flour, repeating a call-and-response chant with his father or grandfather, calling down prosperity on the household. When the ceremony is complete, each person present receives a flatbread, then we rise and go out to the field to begin the work.
Son tapches
An elder broadcasts the seed over the moist soil before the plow.
The plow follows, integrating the manure and the seed into the soil. The plowman sings to the dzo as he follows them, encouraging and urging them on. He also carries a stick. With the plowmen who sing more, the dzo respond to his voice alone, and his need to use the stick is much less.
Teams of people working with thokse and rbat follow the plow, harrowing furrows, fully integrating the seed and smoothing the surface of the soil.
If all goes well, the household’s fields are completed before the cold and dark of evening. Tired at the end of this day, Ache Kunzes’ plowing day, we all rest together in the afternoon light.
On namgang, the new moon, we wake to snow. There is a nyindzin, a solar eclipse happening somewhere in the world; it is a powerful, auspicious time. We think that there will be no plowing. Ache Kunchok Palmo, Ache Tashi and I go up to the gompa to make prostrations. I injured my knee the day before, and I am grateful for the opportunity to recover. Instead of making prostrations, I sit and read the prayers that they recite, half- breathless, as they bow.
As we leave the gompa, Abi Rinchen calls us in for tea. Acho Stanzin says the soil is not too wet, and we can plow. Swiftly the team assembles; I am amazed, and dismayed for a moment. But everyone encourages me to rest– I spend the day in the kitchen with Abi Rinchen, preparing food and washing dishes. I’ve never held this office before, and I feel delighted to be with her, and a bit proud to be trusted in this way, as a member of the household.
Parkethangpa’s plowing day
Eight students from Princeton and their instructors arrive, and join us for one of the final days of plowing. Many people have already left the village for the city again, and our team is small; we are grateful for their help, good energy, and kindness. They try the different tools and works gamely, learning. Some of them are with us throughout the whole day, from the dawn manure-spreading until we finish the last field at dusk.
Plowing lunch: Padma Itses helps her mother nourish the plowing team.
Nono Jamyang plants potatoes
Azhang Tundup repairs a broken rbat with a stebo; his hands have fashioned most of the plows used in the village now, and made and fixed countless tools throughout his life. Someone told us that every plowman used to carry a stebo in his sash, at the small of his back. If he needed to make an adjustment, or remake a piece of the plow, no time was lost.
Shau tapches
After the plowing work is finished, the fields are prepared to receive the water.
Once the soil surface has dried for several days, the men work together with rbat to smooth and level the surface a second time. They move over the fields ahead of the women, who follow with panka, widening and shaping the canals.
When the canals are prepared, the women do the final, finest work, creating an intricate pattern for the water to follow.
When all the other houses have plowed the fields that they will plow this year, we plant our field. Ache Tashi has given us her tago kir kir, “little round one,” to plant in wheat this year. It is a small field, but everyone comes out to help us. Three different people bring tea and bread and chang– we are overwhelmed, so happy and grateful for their kindness.
Somapei zhing
There is one word for green and blue in Ladakhi, sngonpo — although there is a word for the particular green of just-growing leaves in the springtime. This is jangku, and the first sprouts are jangpa, little green ones.
Growing.
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