Our orchards, paddy fields and kitchen gardens quietly educated generations of Kashmiris. Sadly, this living classroom is disappearing from the lives of our youth.

Like many children of my generation, we spent some time after school hours in our fields and orchards. Our parents would wake us up early in the morning and take us to the paddy fields or the apple garden. They never expected us to do heavy work. Instead, they gave us small responsibilities. Sometimes we carried seedlings, sometimes we helped collect apples, and sometimes we simply observed them working. Our mothers had their own classrooms—the vegetable gardens . They taught us how to sow spinach, beans, radish and turnip, how to remove weeds, and why every plant needed care. Looking back, I realise that those moments were lessons in life rather than lessons in farming.

Our parents were not highly educated. Many of them had never entered a university. Yet they possessed a remarkable understanding of nature.........

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