“I remember someone asking my daughter where milk comes from,” says Kiruba Shankar. “She said it comes in a tetra pack.”

At the time, it felt like a passing moment. But it stayed with him. Growing up in a farming family, Kiruba had always known food through soil, animals, and effort. That answer revealed how far that understanding had shifted.

Across many urban homes today, food arrives without context. Milk comes in cartons, vegetables in neatly packed trays, and meals with a tap on a screen. Somewhere along the way, the connection between what we eat and where it comes from has begun to fade.

For Kiruba Shankar, this gap is not an abstract concern. It is something he has observed closely over years of working with both education and agriculture, and it ultimately shaped a very unusual learning space in rural Tamil Nadu.

Moments like his daughter saying milk comes from a tetra pack stayed with him, and over time, became part of a larger pattern he began to notice in everyday conversations with children.

“At that time, we laughed it off, but it stayed with me,” Kiruba says. “I come from a farming family, and I realised how easily the source of food is disappearing from a child’s understanding. It was not just funny, it was worrying.”

That concern became the foundation of ‘Vaksana Farms’, a 14-acre working farm in the village of Rettanai, where farming is experienced rather than explained, through a structured and immersive 24-hour stay.

From a forgotten land to a living farm

Kiruba’s connection to Rettanai is rooted in family history. Both sides of his family came from agrarian backgrounds, but like many rural households across India, the next generation gradually moved towards cities for education and employment. Over time, the family land itself was left behind.

“When I came back to the land in 2011, it had been untouched for nearly three decades. There were no active farming systems left, and it was completely overgrown,” he explains in a conversation with The Better India.

The change that followed unfolded slowly as a process of rebuilding that took time to materialise. The initial six acres that were revived gradually expanded as more land was reclaimed and restored. Over time, it grew into a 14-acre ecosystem combining crops, trees, animals, water systems, and learning spaces.

“Rebuilding the farm was less about restoring what was there before, and more about understanding what the land could become again,” he explains.

The name Vaksana, meaning “fertile land with lush greenery”, reflects that intention more than its past does.

Step into a farm that feels like a classroom

The shift from farming to experiential learning did not begin as a business idea. It developed slowly as schools began visiting the farm, and children responded with curiosity and surprise to common........

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