It’s still cool and cloudy, but the rain has stopped. It’s supposed to be sunny from tomorrow onwards, and then it will get very hot. I think we will finally have our summer. We have almost a month till we plant, so some good hot and dry weather will be great, though less pleasant to work in.
Yesterday, no one could got to Chhitauni, let alone work there. Instead, we visited a nursery to check out how much trees cost. A lot! We are planning instead to get a large shipment from Kolkata, which is where many of these nurseries get them as well. We’re in touch with Mondal nursery in Salt Lake, and they sound decent. The prices are much better as well.
We can’t get all our trees there, though, because that would break our budget completely. We have decided to get 2000 trees from them – a mix of fruit and flowering trees and the chosen non-native ones we want to put in as well. The rest of the trees will come from here: a combination of our own saplings, germinated from seeds from our existing trees, gifts, and whatever we can wrangle from the Forest Department.
Today, most of our staff are cutting the kasha grass that grows over most of our Chhitauni land. Once it dries, it will be a great perforating material to add to the trenches. We are also collecting the second batch cow urine to use in the organic fertilizer we are making.
Our updated month-long calendar, starting from tomorrow, May 30, includes the dates for making fertilizer, getting together materials, finishing the trenches and retaining wall, planning rain-water harvesting cisterns and irrigation pipelines, and ordering plants. Planting day one is tentatively scheduled for 25th June!
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