Chapter XXXIV
Tolstoy Farm—II
Upon the Farm oranges, apricots and plums grew in such abundance that during the season the Satyagrahis could have their fill of the fruit and yet have a surplus.
The spring was about 500 yards away from our quarters, and the water had to be fetched on carrying poles. Here we insisted that we should not have any servants either for the household work or as far as might be even for the farming and building operations. Everything therefore from cooking to scavenging was done with our own hands. As regards accommodation for families, we resolved from the first that the men and women should be housed separately. The houses therefore were to be built in two separate blocks, each at some distance from the other. For the time it was considered sufficient to provide accommodation for ten women and sixty men. Then again we had to erect a house for Mr Kallenbach and by its side a school house, as well as a workshop for carpentry, shoemaking etc.
The settlers hailed from Gujarat, Tamilnad, Andhradesh and North India, and there were Hindus, Musalmans, Parsis and Christians among them. About forty of them were young men, two or three old men, five women and twenty to thirty children of whom four or five were girls.
The Christian and other women were meat-eaters. Mr Kallenbach and I thought it desirable to exclude meat from the Farm. But how could we ask people, who had no scruples in the matter, who had been habituated to taking meat since childhood and who were coming over here in their days of adversity, to give up meat even temporarily? But if they were given meat, would not that swell our cost of living? Again should those who were accustomed to take beef be given that too? How many
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