Vision Acres to Van Vadi

Vision Acres to Van Vadi

Ten Years down the Road …… a reflection and renewal (2005)

Bharat Mansata

All around,

an emerald ocean;

the hills and ridges

crest its waves.

On a soaring perch*,

Eternity pauses

in silent enchantment,

then breaks

into birdsong.

And the sky

turns delirious

with colour.

(* the machaan: a high, rustic, wood-pole and bamboo structure, looking over the surrounding tree-tops. Ours has a wonderful view of the undulating landscape all around, including the distant hills on

the east and west, the adivasi table-land closer south, and several villages to our north and north-east.)

Ten monsoons ago, three of us – Ramanand, Sesha & I – walked several hours on this land, drenched in the rain and ambience. It was our first visit, and an unforgettable one. We were lost. But winding our way through thick vegetation, hunched below spreading branches and snaking creepers, we kept feeling – this was the place we had waited four years and dozens of scouting trips to find!

While the trees we saw around were yet small, in most parts they were dense. Just a few decades ago, this land had been a full-grown forest with many giant trees whose girths took two pairs of outstretched arms to encircle. A few of their weathered stumps are still around to remind us of their former glory, savagely mowed down by deforestation. (After the first wave of logging – for timber – the tenacious re-growth of the forest was periodically cut down in diminishing cycles of 10 to 4 years, first for making charcoal, and later for selling as firewood.)

We were initially looking to buy about 10-15 acres for organic farming, mainly of fruit and vegetables. This was to be divided among 3-4 of us. But with more ‘like-minded’ people joining, I began dreaming of an ‘alternative community’ of sorts gradually evolving – a community that aspired to meet its varied needs in harmony with nature and fellow humans.

We tentatively named our venture ‘Vision Acres’. Five years later, we adopted a local name, ‘Van Vadi,’ which means forest settlement or forest-farm.The broad agreed aim was to “live close to the land in an ethical and sustainable manner – to benefit ourselves, the land, and perhaps the local people as well”. Progressive self-reliance in basics, like food, was an important, explicit goal.

The first guiding principle of our common ‘charter’ was earth-care. We agreed that at least half the land should remain under tree cover; agro-chemicals be prohibited; water usage conservative; extensive mono-cultures shunned, and biodiversity aided through integration of various edible and locally useful species, particularly indigenous varieties, suited to existing conditions.

Our second guiding principle was “fair dealings with people and respect for local culture”. Simple lifestyles and social discretion were mentioned in this context.

The third guideline posited: “quality of life, and local self-reliance should have priority over considerations of monetary profit”.

Eventually, we bought 64 contiguous acres – mainly from two large, Maratha landowners – with the pooled contributions of 24 of us. Ten percent of this was to be held in common, and the balance 90% demarcated into individual plots. The common land was for access paths, and for shared facilities like a well, common house, nursery, etc; and for any common projects that may be taken up in the future. [But as of now, the entire land is still un-demarcated and held in common, with the understanding that demarcated plots may be handed over to individual members when they so desire and are willing to take the responsibility.]

In the years that passed, there were more occasions to feel lost! Our sporadic progress followed its own sweet, or sometimes tortuous, pace. Gradually, we managed to complete our official boundary survey, do a botanical survey of our main tree and shrub species, and a partial, internal survey of the land’s topography and prominent features. We built our common house and found five local adivasis to work and live full-time on the land.

Adivasis: Farming, Forest & Biodiversity in Use

While we were mainly thinking of planting fruits and vegetables, it was the adivasis who showed us that we could also grow on our undulating land – the gentler slopes – a variety of local millets like nacchni (ragi), varie, kangu; oilseeds like sesame, … And rice too – in low-lying, relatively flat, run-off beds at the mouth of minor streams, which required only a little more levelling and careful bunding to retain the rainwater needed by the rice plants.

We learnt from our adivasi workers that we have a number of potential small clearances for farming, presently under a predominance of shrubs like the uksi and the thorny karvanda. These could be cut and pushed back to form a dry, protective hedge to keep stray cattle out. Over the years, several such farming clearances, totalling almost 4 acres, were thus carved out.

We listed – with local, tribal help – over 115 naturally occurring and traditionally useful species, growing on our land. Of these, 80% figure in the compendium, ‘The Useful Plants of India’, with more detailed information available in ‘The Wealth of India’ – a multi-volume encylopaedia of natural inheritance. [We have compiled a thick box-file ‘The Botanical Wealth of Van Vadi’ – not half complete – which already has several hundred pages of printed (and hand-written) information on the plant species growing on our land, including their documented/ known uses.]

We discovered that we have over 35 ‘wild’ (uncultivated) food species that – in tribal knowledge – yield some edible part or parts (leaf, fruit, flower, stem, root), usually at a certain time of the year. Of these species, we identified the botanical names of almost 30 plants, and verified their use as food from ‘The Wealth of India’ and ‘Food from Forests’.

[If the above information is surprising, as it was to us, ‘The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management’ informs: “Of the estimated 80,000 edible plants (on this earth), only about 150 have been cultivated on a large scale, and less than 20 provide (now) 90 percent of our food.” However, even among our own tribals, more rooted to the land than most, the practice of consuming uncultivated forest foods is significantly declining – for several reasons.]

Food apart, we learnt that the land has more than 45 plant species documented to be of medicinal use; and at least 20 timber species, including four rated as ‘first grade timbers’. And then there are plants that yield natural dyes, soaps, oils (edible and non-edible), gums and resins, botanical pesticides, leaf plates, etc. (A number of species have multiple uses.)

The above is in addition to the more commonly sourced fodder, fuel, fibre, dry hedge (karavanda) cuttings, … not to mention rocks for building, seeds and seedlings for propagation, and the profusion of rich fertility resources like earthworm castings, arrested run-off topsoil (sedimented silt), leaf litter mulch, green manure, etc. to enhance the productivity of cultivated clearances. Moreover, the entire forested land functions like an enormous sponge to soak and store huge quantities of increasingly precious fresh water, while all the dense vegetative growth serves as a ‘sink’ for absorbing carbon dioxide, recycling it back into lung invigorating, pure oxygen.

Presently, if one follows a flock of birds flying eastward from Matheran to Bhimashankar, ours is perhaps the biggest and richest forest patch between the two. In ‘hard numbers’, the land has – at a rough, conservative estimate – more than forty thousand trees, excluding tall shrubs and tree-climbing vines. Of these, at least half are over twenty feet tall, including a quarter that are about twenty-five, or even thirty feet in height.

In summer, most of the trees (largely deciduous) are bereft of their green mantle. Several species, however, regain their leaves before the end of May – well before the rains arrive! A month earlier, the fresh, tender leaves on the Mahua trees are red, but soon metamorphose into a lush green. New, bright leaves sparkle too on all the young, and not-so-young, Palash trees. And then the land also has several evergreen species like jambul, karavanda, mango – fruiting abundantly ere the monsoon sets in.

The rich natural inheritance of the region sustained the adivasis for generations beyond count. Today, if there are any people left on this earth who can teach our floundering ‘millennium generation’ the fine art and science of co-existing in harmony with the forest, it is these tribals. Or rather, just a few among them now, who still retain the knowledge, the skills, and the native cultural perspective.

Fauna

Barely six decades ago, our land was known as the ‘Leopard’s Run’. Peacocks dwelt here, and so did deer. Deforestation robbed the leopard of its habitat, and cut off the ‘corridors’ through which it roamed from one forest area to another. The peacocks and deer disappeared more through hunting, but degraded habitat as well. The few wild animals that can still be spotted occasionally are: the baool (wild cat), the raan-dukkar (or wild boar), the bhekar (fox), the mongoose, and the hare.

The land, however, is still very rich in the smaller, soil and vegetation-dwelling creatures. There are several kinds of earthworms, ants, snakes, crabs, etc. There is also a bewildering variety of spiders, colourful butterflies, dragonflies, … and fireflies, bees, and birds (of various hues) that heighten the enchanting ambience of the place.

Protection

On a part of our boundary, we constructed a 650 ft long, 2.5 ft high, stone and mud wall, and dug a parallel 1.5 ft deep trench along its outer edge. Though a very effective and lasting protection barrier, this was laborious and time-consuming. And so, on the remaining part of our long, jagged boundary, we opted to put up a dry, kathi hedge, using mainly cuttings of the thorny, semi-coppicible karavanda shrub (Carissa carandas) that grows abundantly on the land.

Over the years, we also planted a live hedge (on the inner side of our dry hedge), with mainly 5 species: (i) Kalak (thorny) bamboo, good for construction poles; (ii) Nirgudi (Vitex negundo), a valuable medicinal plant, also known locally as Vanai; (iii) Sabri, a thorny cactus; (iv) Chandrajyoti (Jatropha curcas, or ‘physic nut’), also known as ratanjyot; and (v) Sagargota (Caesalpinia crista, or ‘fever nut’), a thorny creeper. Some Karvanda shrubs too have rooted – by themselves, probably from the uncollected, edible berry droppings of hedge reinforcements.

Of the above ‘live hedge’ species, we’ve had best results with Chandrajyoti, that has established really well. A full-grown plant yields – for each metre of live hedge – a kilo of seeds each year. These seeds are so rich in oil, that they were traditionally threaded on a thin stick and lit as a ‘mobile torch’. Before kerosene became widely available, chandrajyoti oil was commonly used for lighting diyas or wick lamps, that provided good illumination, burning without soot. The Jatropha oil is used too for manufacturing soaps, candles, varnishes. The plant is reported to have several medicinal uses, while the leaves yield a natural dye. Today, the large-scale planting of Jatropha is mainly being promoted as a diesel substitute, “fuel of the future”, and is threatening to take over even the fields where food crops have been traditionally cultivated.

For long boundaries, this combination of dry hedge, and multi-functional live hedge seems the most affordable, replicable and therefore widely relevant strategy of land/forest protection. Of course, two of our workers have been almost full time on the job of patrolling the land, reinforcing the dry kathi hedge, and – in the monsoon – planting the live hedge. But despite this, effective protection of a sprawling area like ours is extremely difficult without good relations and the goodwill of neighbouring villagers.

Rainwater Harvesting and Water Security

In an average year, the rainfall on our land exceeds 200 cms, or 8 ft! With such a generous supply, any water scarcity (for reasonable needs) is a failing of people, not nature.

Our dense (and now tall) tree cover has contributed enormously to ground water recharge. All the porous soil below such thick vegetation – well buffered and root-bound against erosion – is like a massive sponge, efficiently harvesting rainwater by soaking and percolating it to underlying aquifers. Here, it is stored on sheet-rock ‘shelves’, enabling withdrawal through open wells or bore-wells. This is significantly benefiting all the nearby villages and lands downstream of us, whose water security has greatly improved.

When a bore-well on our land was first contemplated almost 8 years ago, several in our group expressed their reservations. However, we decided to go for one, while opting for a hand-pump to avoid wastage. This, we felt, would ensure that the annual withdrawal of ground water never exceeds annual recharge. (Our group was aware that high wastage, through the proliferation of motorized bores, was a primary cause of dropping water tables.)

The hand-pumped bore-well proved adequate for our domestic needs, but not for irrigation. Manually pumping the water, filling a drum loaded on a bullock-cart, and then transporting it to water distant plantings scattered over a large area, was too laborious. Moreover, by mid-summer, the water level would fall below the depth of our hand-pumped bore tube, leaving us bone dry. (Being on higher ground, we were vulnerable to the high withdrawal of groundwater by the many motorized bore-wells in the villages and farms downstream of us.) Many of the saplings we planted, just withered and died. This state of affairs continued for several years!

Around 2000-2001, two small, rock and earth check dams were built, one just a little downstream of our hand-pump. The idea was to check rain run-off, and thereby enhance percolation into the aquifer feeding our bore-well. This helped, and the pump yielded a few weeks longer than in earlier years, despite increased withdrawal for the protective irrigation of introduced saplings. But before mid-May, the bore dried again.

Finally, in 2001-2002, embarrassed by the remonstration of the veteran natural farmer, Bhaskar Save – who visited at our request – we dug a large, open well near the edge of our main (seasonal) stream. This was excavated at the site of an old, fully silted water-hole that the adivasis sometimes drew from a decade ago, even in summer.

The open well served us well, filling to the brim within a week of the monsoon, and yielding considerable water for 11 months. (Neighbouring adivasis too drew from it – for their drinking and cooking needs – when their own open well dried.) But by mid May, 2003, our open well also ran dry.

The following year, 2004, was much better, and the open well did not dry. But forewarned by the previous year’s experience, we had already started excavating a ‘rock pool’ reservoir and building a small check dam (with the extracted material) on the rocky outcrop a little upstream of our well. This was not only to store a large, additional amount of rain (stream flow) as a surface water-body for our irrigation needs, but also to enhance the recharge of our well, which we hoped would become perennial as a result.

In September 2004, Bhaskar Save visited us again to help us develop one or two intensive orchard plots, and to guide us in our other farming efforts. His advise was plain. If we aimed to evolve a self-reliant community, and feed it sustainably, we needed to further increase our water harvesting efforts, and also lay a pipeline for more efficient irrigation of distant plots and saplings. For the former, he recommended that we should gradually increase the depth of our rock pool reservoir every year, and undertake similar work on other parts of the stream, or on other monsoon streams flowing through our land.

The pipeline for water delivery (up to a tank near our house) was laid the same year (2004), but additional work on water harvesting was delayed beyond Holi. In April 2005, we started deepening our stream-bed rock pool, and used the excavated rocks to widen and strengthen the check dam downstream of it.

Before the monsoon arrived this year, our open well again dried up. This was likely due to high extraction from surrounding (or downstream) motorised borewells that plumbed a depth much below the bottom of our open well. These trials notwithstanding, we do seem on a sound path of achieving water security for ourselves fairly soon. By January 2006, we’ll resume deepening our rock pool, and perhaps undertake a similar, low-cost project elsewhere on our land