07/06/2024
We are sharing some pictures of fruits that grow through the year at the food forest. The sheer diversity is humbling. With temperatures touching 50 degrees in NCR, it's become all the more relevant to plant native trees, plant orchards and forests. It's invaluable.
This is the vibrant diverse abundant food forest at Shreevanam by Beejom in Western Uttar Pradesh.
With a little nudge and push nature just happily takes over if u allow it to be. Soil building is the core. No assistance here in terms of even organic fertilizers or pest repellants unlike our open fields and absolutely no till of course. Native trees, Fruit trees, medicinal plants and herlos, pollinator plants, nitrogen fixers, vegetables both perennial and seasonal all sit cheek by jowl and thrive so happily. Yes of course, there is great work and a lot of effort in the planning and ex*****on of something like this. It's not a project. it's a commitment to learning and growing with the land. We have to plan the design, understand the soil and water, climate patterns, crop calendar and related sustainable systems that work to be off the grid. So we have worked to create systems for solar energy, bio gas, rainwater harvesting, grey water harvesting, seed saving, animal husbandry and growing more perennials. However, once established every year will only get better and easier.
While we let nature be and grow great diversity, we must interfere only to the extent that land is not wasted and growing is optimised.
Something invaluable for the small farmer.
☘️No till
☘️Planting Diversity and building guilds
☘️Concentrating on native varieties
☘️ Rainwater harvesting
☘️Grey water harvesting & Solar
☘️Bio gas
☘️Nitrogen Fixers
☘️Focus on perennials
☘️Energy efficient systems and planning spaces carefully
☘️Zero waste space
☘️Composting of all kinds
☘️Minimum external inputs and maximum utilisation of existing available resources and local materials
☘️Growing soil
☘️Observation and
☘️Intelligent minimum intervention
Has helped create this space.
Deeper, denser, richer than it ever was. It's been only 7 years on this land. This was just a vast drab monocropped sugarcane field when we bought it.
Look at the abundance, the diversity and the incredible layering that is slowly developing.
Look closely. The bright sparkling healthy lush greenery, abundant produce, the melodious sounds of insects and birds in the background and dark moist sweet smelling soil. All this is indicative of a growing ecological balance.
The land is dense with trees and produce. More than 70- 80 odd varieties of fruits and native trees stand cheek by jowl. The air is dense and moist and the soil is growing richer by the day with all the rotting leaf fall. The water PH has improved and the TDS is perfect. The temperature is at least 4 degrees cooler. Winter stretches to late April and summer is shorter than the city with cool evenings starting in September itself when the city is sweltering.
Growing a food forest changes you. Farming skills apart it needs solitude, stillness, self reflection, philosophy, a love for nature and learning, great enquiry, a sense of adventure, intense observation, absolute concentration, empathy, compassion and a great amount of joy, equanimity, passion perseverence and patience. Then you shall be rewarded surely. This is the greatest inner engineering.
Masanobu Fukuoka's famous words ring so truly....
"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."
So we are all work in progress and the quest to perfection is never-ending.
Let nature take over and see the magic unfold.
