We’ve been away and our focus has been simply to keep going – protect existing trees, continue with organic farming, and maintain our boundaries. The extreme seasons of north India give us enough to do to keep things under control! In 2025, we plan to do our next round of intense plantation. Since January, weContinue reading “Gearing up”
Tag Archives: soil preparation
Cutting grass and mixing mud
The last two months have mainly been a daily slog to do these two things. Sunil works for a few hours with the grass cutter to reclaim meter after square meter of land from the wild flood-jungle it had become. And we have had the JCB digger in again to make the compost mix andContinue reading “Cutting grass and mixing mud”
Harvesting babul – and more
We have started thinning out the babul trees (Vachellia nilotica or gum arabic trees) on our land. They grew on their own, and really took over the landscape, which we have been very thankful for these past few years when we didn’t have our own trees. But now it is time to select, prune, andContinue reading “Harvesting babul – and more”
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!”
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!”
First steps
Digging, tool-building, organising The excavator is busy making trenches along the entire boundary, in order to plant intensively, Miyawaki-style. The trenches are 10 x 20 ft, and each will contain about 75 trees of four different sizes. We’re in the process of making lists of trees and contacting nurseries to order the saplings for nextContinue reading “First steps”
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