My first experiment - No dig beds

With my hands itching to start experimenting with all the wonderful Permaculture techniques learnt at the PDC in bali, I decided to start with 'No-dig' beds for a fresh source of veggies for our dining table. With not enough biomass available at Chaitraban yet, we nevertheless decided to proceed with the experiment, with whatever we had....

We had,

- Rolls of cardboard,without ink (Unfortunately, India still has leaded ink for printing. If it wasn't so, newspaper would have been the cheapest option)

- Patches of the leftover of some veggies like dill, spinach and fenugreek. We followed the 'chop-n-drop' technique and dropped them on place. At that time, we did not have enough green biomass, but had to make do with what we had.

- Dry cut hay. We had let the grass grow tall on unused patches of land after the last monsoon. In the absense of helping hands, we made a deal with the villagers. They cut the grass for us and in return got half of the hay for their cattle. This worked wonderfully w.ell and we had a big pile of dried hay. This was not really ideal as there were always some leftover seedheads in the bales, but most had fallen off on land and we did the best we could, afterall!

- Manure. Having a cow at Chaitraban was still a dream, and we had to import a truck load of cow manure to fertilise the young trees and veggies for the time being

- Some topsoil.

We layered the same in the order- Greens, Cardboard, Manure, Dry biomass, manure, dry biomass, manure, soil, mulch of the dry biomass. After each layer, we moistened it just a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The plan is to grow the greens and follow chop-n-drop for the nitrogen.
Now, our job was to keep the bed moist and to see what happens...and...

After a week...
Voila!!! I picked up some mulch and explored underneath and what a treasure I found! The bed was teeming with tiny creatures of all shapes and sizes :-) And I could already see earthworms! It was the most wonderful and satisfying moments at Chaitraban for me! Now, the beds waited to be planted with some nice veggies for our dining table...



 

The PDC at Bali- was it a dream?

I had always wondered if I was the only one who seemed to be crazy to other people around. I had been leading a normal life in the city (if you can call a city life, normal) and still, my heart seemed to be in a far away place. Some place where there were tall tall green trees, the sun rays falling through a net of leaves, birds chirping and feeding their young in all the hidden branches, beautiful butterflies flying from one wild flower to the other, and bees stealing nectar from each bloom on the plants. There were rabbits and deer not afraid of people and nuzzling around me :-). There was no greed, no cruelty, no cement, no plastic, no fast food and no TV (if anyone can imagine!). Life was peaceful. I wondered if I was really crazy!

The internet opened my world wide and I realised there were hundreds, millions of people who dreamt of the Eden that I did. I longed to reach out and meet them and I finally got my chance one day!

It was a terrible day when I realised everything I have been doing at Chaitraban had all been in a wrong order! It dawned on me when I started learning Permaculture seriously. Uptill now, it had only been a hobby but one book lead to another and to another and to another until I was reading and watching videos and browsing about only Permaculture all day. I had too much knowledge crammed in my not-used-for-a-long-time brain and was getting confused day by day. Suddenly, I had this great enlightenment :-) of doing a Permaculture Design Certificate Course. I browsed and browsed on the net for one in India and found one too. But I needed more adventure (and it was time for a vacation too! I had never taken a break alone in my life and now I had a chance!) and I stumbled upon a course in Bali. It wasn't too far, the faculty was great and the venue looked promising. Out I went packing off to Bali in February 2013...

The lumbung

 We were twenty seven of us, enrolled for the PDC and all had almost the same vision. I met wonderful people, some closer to their dreams than others and some like me, just starting to realise that we could make our dream a reality one day. Each friend had a story to tell, about good and bad experiences, had had their shares of ups and downs in life. We were of different age groups, some in their late fifties and the youngest was twelve years old! He was from a family of organic farmers and was the most interested and the most amazing participant in the whole group. We also had a baby of four months amongst us! If she could talk, I am sure she would have had a story of her own to tell. We all shared our experiences and learnt from each other. We were like a family for those days of the PDC at Bali. We had great interesting sessions of classroom hours, movie hours in the day and then we would dissapear in the lanes of Bali for a different and great gourmet experience in the evenings.

My first duck!

At the end of the course, we had a teary goodbye session with promises of keeping in touch on the net and with a heavy heart I caught my flight home. Once in the flight, my spirits rose at the thought of seeing my loving family again after such a long long time and started planning on how I would apply all that I had learnt.

With a vision of my own Eden, our Chaitraban, smiling to myself, I dozed off on the flight back...

 

All ready to welcome guests!

Yes, finally! Our dream comes true and "Chaitraban" is ready to welcome guests. We have had a stream of guests all weekends but now, we can officially say, Chaitraban invites all our special guests. With the kid's homework and swimming costumes packed and ready on friday evening, we leave early on saturday and reach there where a steaming hot lunch is waiting for us. After lunch, my husband usually retires for a much-awaited and much-deserved siesta, the kids retire to the attic room for some board games and I potter about in the garden, checking out a new sapling, a new nest hidden in the bushes or a new beehive among the bunds. Evening is family time with some outdoor games with the children. Dinner is again served hot on the porch which is fragrant with night jasmine and passion flowers. It tastes all the more better with only the stars above us and the moon smiling on Chaitraban in the dark night.



The house at Chaitraban

Early morning is the most beautiful time of the day at Chaitraban with the golden glow of the rising sun, the chirping of the birds (there are hundreds of them nesting in the new plants), the numerous butterflies hovering over the beautiful new flowers, the smiling lilies in the pond, the fish waking up to the sound of feet indicating feeding time and waggy jumping over the bunds in anticipation of a pat oh his head. The mountains are also waking up with the sky getting bluer by the second and the fresh new monsoon carpet of grass looking greener! I am awake and about checking out on the plants and new fruit, saying 'hi' to each and every one of them.

I sometimes walk down to the river and sit on my favourite rock in the silence, only broken by the occasional song of a morning bird. I love to watch the water birds swimming in pairs with the little ones waddling behind them trying to catch a small fish. It is a lovely sight and I am selfish enough to hope that no other human being comes along to break the symphony of nature. When the sun rays are too warm I retire to the house for a hot cuppa with poha...The kids are up and about running up and down the wooden staircase with waggy jumping about behind them. The morning is spent lazing about the house and garden till a yummy lunch of chicken rassa is devoured by all. It is time to read one of the books from our small liabrary and kids do their homework. Evening time is beautiful too with the cool breeze on our faces. But now, it is time to drive back home to Mumbai. The hard work of all has paid off and was worth every effort taken by us and all the wonderful friends who have helped us.

We take back the fresh air in our lungs and lovely sights in our hearts and mind to store for a week until it is time to return back to Chaitraban next weekend!

A wonderful workshop with Urban Leaves

The hands-on experience...

What a wonderful workshop it was! It was a beautiful venue at Maharashtra Nature Park and one could not imagine such wilderness existed in Mumbai! The workshop was on Permaculture. We had been reading on Permaculture for over a year now and it was very very exciting to hear it from the international teacher. It was great meeting so many like-minded people who were from different fields...We had scientists. MBAs, nature enthusiasts, social workers, architects and many others. Made a lot of friends and had fun exchanging ideas, learning new things and majorly becoming friends in those wonderful five days spent together! Now we can confidently put in practice, the permaculture techniques we learnt.

The wonderful IMOs and yeah, it had a fresh fragrance like beer!!!

The herb spiral built of bricks...fruits of hard labour...especially as the bricks were carried more than 50 steps up!

We made a solar water heater, a rocket stove and a solar cooker! We also had great fun learning how to make IMO's, sheet mulching and how to make a herb spiral. The herb spiral is our favourite and is the first project we will take up once the house is ready...

Our little gang making the solar water heater...

The monsoon plantings...

First flowers to the rose sapling planted with garlic for protection

The first monsoon was relaxed and we could enjoy the virgin land. This monsoon brought with it, tons of work! Since we hadn't had the time to make the soil, the fertilizer (Cowmanure and sugar baggase compost) was brought in.

Waggy comes home...

We had always wanted a dog but with life in an apartment in the city hardly allowed us to have one. Now we needed a dog on the farm. Two would just do the trick of guarding the farm but we decided we will start with one.

Look at the deceptive doleful look!

All green in the first rains!!!

From brown to green!

The small rice field the previous owner sowed...

The brook running through NR

The first rains were wonderul! It rained cats and dogs and the chilly winds made us wish for a hot coffee all the time, and we could not wait to have a proper place to enjoy the rains, sitting indoors. The plans in place on paper, the herculian task of finding a caretaker started. It was the most difficult of all steps we took till today.