The floods have receded, leaving us to survey the damage. There is less than we feared. The water entered the land through a few main points. We think we can close most of them up so that much of the land isn’t affected next time. The one part of the land which is very lowContinue reading “Coming out the other side”
Tag Archives: trees
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”
Tree list
We are aiming for 100 each of the following, through a combination of our own seedlings, cuttings, purchases, and gifts: Semal Jamun Laung (clove) Arjun Sal Sagwan (teak) Kanak Champa Indian coral Mahua Shirish Gulmohur Amaltas Mango Imli Kadamba Almond Nutmeg (and mace) Bay leaf Shisham Anjan Subabul Neem Kachnar Ashok Palash Gonj Bakain MaulshreeContinue reading “Tree list”
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…”
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”