A bright yellow rowing boat, no bigger than a bathtub, lies upside down on the banks of a pond brimming with tilapia.
This boat once took its rower, Mrs Ivy Singh-Lim, around the pond in the evening, but because of her poor heart health, she can no longer balance.
“My husband is in a wheelchair and cannot come save me if I splash inside,” she said.
Now, the former president of Netball Singapore and the Asian Federation of Netball Associations just sits on her porch, sometimes on her wooden swing and gazes at the pond, a single-storey, wooden-roofed house behind her.
Her dining room opens straight into the porch where she sits. The room has a bar to one side, a table with photos of her dogs to the other. A mosquito net is placed below the ceiling to stop lizards from dropping onto guests at dinner parties that no longer take place.
The house has ample ramps and non-obstructive doorways for wheelchair users, as well as a disabled-friendly bathroom. “We knew that if we were going to grow old in this house, we had to make it disability-friendly,” Mrs Ivy noted.
The house, the pond, and the boat are all scheduled to be razed once the lease of the land, Bollywood Farms, is up by December this year. Mrs Ivy, 77, continues to petition for a third extension, but she wonders whether it is time to give up the fight.
The Singapore Food Agency and the Singapore Land Authority told The Straits Times that the previous lease extensions were only to facilitate a transitional period for the farm, as its lease originally ended in 2021.
Mrs Ivy and her husband Mr Lim Ho Seng, former chief executive officer of NTUC Fairprice, bought the Lim Chu Kang property near the Kranji marshes in 2000, after the passing of their close friend, which reshaped their views of what living in Singapore could be like.
Now, it’s an iconic landmark, notably for its feisty owner, affordable eats at its restaurant Poison Ivy Bistro, or workshops like paddy farming or pandan planting. Most of all, it serves as a countryside escape from the city.
While the farm does not supply bulk products or aim to make high profits, Mrs Ivy insists that the government needs to invest in places like Bollywood Farms that provide agricultural education with freedom.
“If you ask people who come here, why they come here, why don’t they go to farms in Johor? Well, they can’t take their dogs to Johor. Even in Singapore, there are lots of parks where you cannot take your dogs, your kids cannot pluck their plants, they can’t act natural there.”
“We have groups coming here from China to do workshops. Why would they come here? Well, Singapore is the safest place in the world. They could go to Bali, where it’s cheaper, but they would rather pay a premium price for the safety. There is value in these places.”
The name Bollywood Farms didn’t stem from a particular longstanding love of the Hindi cinema industry but actually came from a marketing perspective.
“It was first called The House of Orchids. I told my husband we have to change the name because it doesn’t make sense, every ‘donkey’ will come here and think we are selling orchids,” she said, “I worked in a tobacco company for 12 years, which gave me a great background in entertainment and marketing, so I wanted to be different.”
Though the Hindi cinemascape did not directly impact the farm, it was still part of Ms Ivy’s childhood.
“I used to watch an Indian movie every week with my friends, at a theatre called Queens,” she said, citing Raj Kapoor as one of her preferred stars.
Despite her Rajput, “warrior caste” lineage from her father, the late wealthy businessman Mr Bachoo Singh, she has never been to India. “I think it’s silly for people to identify me as an Indian; I am not Chinese, I am not Indian, I am a Singaporean, and proud of it.”
“The Gentle Warrior” is the name often given to Mrs Ivy, a confusing title for those who have met her, as she is anything but.
She used to simply refer to herself as “The Warrior,” and she had a blog with the same name, but she eventually renamed her title.
“But then 9/11 happened, and my friends started to worry. They would say ‘The hijackers also call themselves warriors’,” she said. “My husband, meanwhile, was referred to as the ‘Gentleman Farmer’, so to stop the CIA from knocking on my door, I changed my name to The Gentle Warrior.”
But even warriors eventually put down their swords.
Mrs Singh, who had the fire to fight for an extension of the lease until just about a week ago, said that a diagnosis in her family is making her reconsider.
“I’m at the stage where I’m prepared to leave everything and walk out,” she said, “My favourite dog, Babu, has cancer. His time is coming soon. Frankly, he is the last thing about this farm that I love. Once he dies, I’m ready to take my husband and move into a nice retirement house.
“There is a bigger plan that nobody knows, so there’s no use fighting it. I’ll just let destiny carry on.”
So far, an online petition on petitions.com has over 1000 signatures to save the farm.
The farm hasn’t announced plans to stop operations, so those interested can still visit.
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2 Apr 2026 20:24
