Last week, Ragu and I attended an awesome 6 day mud building workshop by Sourabh Phadke

Wanted to share a wonderful article passed on by our friend, Suren, that reviews perennial staple crops aka food forests.

A month back, after harvesting the sun hemp, we proceeded to seed all the raised beds in the 25 cents with a variety of seeds weighing about 10 kgs (22 pounds). Many of the seeds were tiny so we decided against making clay pellets for faster completion of work. Also, we are not very good at making these pellets so the decision was easy. 

Recently, a visitor asked us a question many people have asked us: How do we plan to grow different crops in between rows of trees in our farm that create shade? I stumbled on a metaphor that seems to answer the question and also provides a way of understanding farm design. 

Few pictures from Winter(!) 2011.

25 cents (11,000 sq ft)  seems like a space that is small enough and big enough for our home needs and some sharing. The soil being what it is, we do not expect to be able to grow every thing.  The list below is some thing we arrived at after some trial and error. 

A rough layout of the different elements..

We've just started work on the 25 cents(10,000 sqft) of land around our house.  This area is very close to the road which is at a much higher level. Also, till a couple of years ago, when there was no check dam, the stream across the road used to cut into this portion of the land.

So with zero top soil and no tilling tools, we are looking at working only on 150-200 sq ft per day if we do it ourselves.  May be we'll hire some help.

Because of some neighbours generously using our land in spite of repeated requests not to do so, we just finished fencing the southern and eastern boundary of the farm using the 'traditional' stone and barbed wire. Took a lot of time and a whole lot of money. We didn't quite expect to be sowing so many stones this planting season but this is what has come up :)

At each step of the fencing proces, some neighbour (or a distant one) was unhappy and work proceeded very slowly. We have to thank the fencing team for sticking with us through all the mess.

The planting season is in full swing around us and we are trying to put as much life into the soil as we can. The monsoon seems to have started much earlier than normal and is expected to bring less rains than normal.  

Newbies like lemons, pepper vines,  some varieties of Bamboo and flowering trees like Plumeria are enjoying the on and off rains.

Tubers like turmeric, ginger, yam, tapioca and taro(Sembu or Seppan Kizhangu in Tamil) have sprouted moderately well.