I had to move out of my first flat as the owner got cold feet about renting to a foreigner. There is a lengthy registration process which he had to sign off on. As my sponsor Joshua says it is a small village and people do not like new things. This village is Uthamapalayam and is about 30,000 people, a village here. Where I live is a lot of concrete houses, painted many interesting colors with a lot of grill work and other interesting details. It is very clean in the back streets as I call them except for the concrete gutters filled with sewage which run outside of every house, taking the sewage to the river. Ugg. Anyway Joshua found me another flat which has better ventilation but more noise, so I am happily moving forward. Am spending a lot of time buying furniture (nothing here is furnished) and something to cook on and with and voila I will have some more control of my diet. I believe I told on my previous email about finally getting some brown rice to eat. Now I am trying to get organic puffed brown rice. Everyone tells me good luck. It turns out that all of these houses on very small lots have their own bore well. The water is very alkaline (another reason that the bore wells will ruin the land for farming). The drinking water somehow comes from the Indian government. I have just learned about the carcinogenic effects of adding chlorine to water with high bacteria contents. hmmm
Yesterday we went and saw the 1 acre parcel that we have been given for a demonstration by a man who will be joining our team, Babu. He believes in the cause, though not enough to interplant his 22 acres with medicinal herbs. I will continue to work on him. He is afraid they will steal his chemical fertilizer for which he just paid more than 2,000 and reduce his production, no matter how much I assure him that they will feed his trees. He even remembers in the past before chemical fertilizer that they used to plant plants to feed the crops, but now he feels he has the system down and knows his yields and cannot afford to make less. A problem for most Indians, as they are security oriented (I guess as most Americans). I asked him what he will do when even the deeper bore wells do not produce water and he says sell his land he guesses.
He does not have the water for the acre he is donating to us so is excited to see what we can do with it. He also said that for the last 7 years the monsoon’s here have been very light and he did not try dry land farming because of that. The great news is that on this parcel his father had built a channel to the hills and hooray a large reservoir. So his father has the skills that we need to design reservoirs as well as their being one already built. The neighbors decided that he was stealing their water so they blocked off the channel at the beginning of his land (or where their land abuts his). We will be looking for funds to make an animated movie about how these projects help the neighbors wells to work better as well as to increase rainfall in the area. The Indian government understands all this which is why they are paying people to plant trees and doing some reservoirs. Babu’s father told me that they are asking people to donate their land to them to make the reservoirs, but, a) people do not understand this and b) they think the government should use its own land to do the reservoirs.
I think my chances of convincing the father to plant the medicinal herb interplants is good, as the sooner we can get a demonstration going the better. We are looking at varieties of trees that can do with very little water and so far it looks like cashew trees would be great. With the reservoir here and babu’s 22 acres all in trees we have everything we need to increase the rainfall in this area.
I think I said previously that where Bhaskar Save’s farm is there is plenty of rain and 20 km away there is not and his land is around 17 acres, so I am aiming for a 20 acre demonstration.
I plan to take up serious rain dancing or whatever it takes to bring the rain so we can dry land farm on the 1 acre site. The monsoon does not start until june so that is a ways off. We will meawhile use Joshua’s back yard to start planting and both of our roof tops, so we will have organic vegetables in 45 days.
Am off to theni to begin the foreigner registration process which will take most of the day. Fortunately another team member is coming and we will be able to chat while we wait.