The two things we have been working on for the past few days are seeds and trenches. Re: the latter, we are in the process of buying and gathering together massive amounts of straw, leaves, and cowdung, and trying to distribute them in piles all around our site. It’s a lot of manual labour, and the size of the trenches is daunting: these enormous craters in the ground with piles of mud next to them, most of which does not seem rich enough to support life (a lot of our soil is sandy or stony). We’re pushing on, because we have decided on this technique after a lot of deliberation, and the crux of the whole thing is the preparation of the soil.
A much more immediately satisfying part of the preparation is the seed work! We had sprouts a few days ago and seedlings today! How lovely they are. By far the most successful species so far are gulmohar and imli (tamarind). But who is to say that speed = success. We are waiting with bated breath for the litchi, shirish, and amaltas to emerge. Neem and shisham, though wonderful, are present in such abundance around us that we tend to take them for granted. For now, we are planning to just transplant the many saplings growing on their own all over our Betawar land.
Unfortunately, we are failing with the lal bij (false red sandalwood: adenanthera pavonina). They swelled up impressively after soaking, but the ones I started in cardboard egg cartons got mold, and the ones in cloth look dried up and shrivelled. Let’s see what happens to the once I put directly in the soil mix after soaking.
In other news, we are inaugurating our new Chhitauni office stove today: Ramesh is making kheer for everyone. We’ll troop over there at the end of the day, children and all.
Here’s a glimpse of our morning bustling, after the meeting to plan the day’s work:
gangavan.org 