Gangavan in 2024

A forest will grow naturally. This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called for the world to plant a trillion trees. Many commentators explain, however, that all you need for forestation is to let the land alone without further damage and the forest will grow back itself. Meanwhile, “….a new study shows that theContinue reading “Gangavan in 2024”

More trees!

We have finally purchased our last (for this year) major batch of trees. 750 native plants for the trenches and a wide variety of fruit trees, both from seed and grafted. The heat is building up and we’ve had a couple of dust storms and very minor showers. We want to get these in beforeContinue reading “More trees!”

Planting rice!

We have started the ‘ropai’: transferring the rice seedlings from the nursery bed to the rice field. The first field we prepared didn’t work, because the soil was too sandy and the water kept draining out. RIce needs standing water. So, we got another field ready: cutting the grass and ploughing, and finally began theContinue reading “Planting rice!”

Bamboo, bridges, and snakes

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last update, because of some unexpected events. But we are back. We’ve had over ten days of sunshine, which meant extremely hot, humid, unpleasant weather, but also that we have been busy. First of all, we decided that we need to get across the nala, rain orContinue reading “Bamboo, bridges, and snakes”

First trenches done!

We managed to hold off the rain till last night (!), and started filling the trenches yesterday. Twelve are done, and what beauties they are! They all have a mix of soil, cowdung, straw, and leaves. They are porous and feel rich and ready to welcome new life. It finally rained last night, so thatContinue reading “First trenches done!”

Whut?!

But….why?? Rain? Now?? Seriously??! We are literally waiting for the sun. We have been getting tractors and tractors of aged cowdung, and picking up piles and piles of leaves, and have bought quintals and quintals of straw. We have enough to start filling the trenches with a mixture of mud, straw, leaves, and compost, andContinue reading “Whut?!”

Hello, babies!

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, andContinue reading “Hello, babies!”

Seeds and cuttings!

We have started working on our seedlings. We will be able to afford to buy about 2000 plants from the nursery. Those will be our specialty fruit/nut/spice trees and trees that aren’t available easily in the vicinity. But all the others – over 4000 – will have to be added over the monsoon and followingContinue reading “Seeds and cuttings!”

Cloudy with a chance of…

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 toContinue reading “Cloudy with a chance of…”