After a very long search me and my friends have selected a farm for long lease. The land is near Gauribidanur, Karnataka and is 14 Acre plot. The whole process took some time to close however once it was done we have been moving swiftly towards getting ready for this to be called as a Horticulture project.
The plan is to convert the land to a Integrated farm so planning includes a lot of pre work for integrated farming. we are looking to setup a farm which is organic , natural and almost as self sufficient as it possibly could be. The Farm will be designed and built to be integrated which produces on the farm what we need at the farm for the purpose of farming. Starting with water ponds constructed for rain water harvesting to leveraging Fishes to enrich the water, we will have cattle and sheep at the farm to leverage Vermicomposting to enrich the soil and also if possible generate and use Biogas. The thoughts are many and in time we will be implementing them all.
The crop mix as of now stands at
Guava - Allahabad Safeda
Lime - Balaji
Seethaphal
Drumstick
Mango varieties
Other perenial tree’s both on the border but also sprinkled in between.
Where we are as of now is – Land readiness
The unwanted trees and shrubs were cleared from the land .
The land was tilled using two teeth Deep plough.
One Run of rotovator
One Borewell.
Finding a JCB was not the problem though trying to get one to land at your farm and make him understand the work to be done was a challenge. Especially when the operator wanted to do things his own way and the hesitation we had to correct him when we did not like what was being done. The same with the tractor- we had a Mahindra tractor a low powered one rented for a day and it would just not work quick enough so we went and got ourselves a person who had two Sonalika tractors with reversable plough directions. Work moved fast but it costed us exactly double of what I had estimated. Though I do not know how things could slow down because of hard land just on the days when we skipped visiting the farm.
Well with all the work planned … we now have a fully tilled plot with one round rotovator deployed. The bigger chunk soil pods have now been broken into smaller chunks and are on their way to backing in the sun killing all the germs that they held for long.
The land is now tilled – I tried finding a few pics but couldn’t … so that will happen next week.
Next on the plan was to get someone who could help us on to the farm to help validate our ideas. Now that went good for some part until the crop mix was discussed and then the crop mix changed to include Mangoes of different varieties. While we bash our heads together to review and accept the new plant mix we have to move ahead with getting the TC for the borewell and a borewell motor.
We were looking for local construction for an office , a labour room and a store room however it has been a challenge and to overcome the challenge – we went ahead and ordered ourselves two ready to use containers to be deployed under tree shade. One for us to work out off ( yes yes the meetings and other regular day job stuff still plagues us!!) and the other container for farm help living quarters and a small store shed.
There is a natural Valley type formation in the farm which we plan to convert to a water storage are by digging up the valley a bit more to the depth of probably 15 feet with one step in between. The target is to store about 50,00,000 Litres of water via Rain harvesting method and this probably will be a small beginning.
A update on work done till now - Nothing much has moved…
we were unaware that there was a village festival in between the week and that no one would be available to work. That was a bummer. Also the transporter gave us the slip so the container office also has not made it to site. Hopefully things will move this weekend.
The Containers finally arrived and work on creating the base for installing the container has been completed now. This was a mini project in itself with all trappings of over engineering and labour and contractors going missing.
Work on identifying where we can get well rotted FYM is in progress. Over the past few weeks we were talking to various people on FYM that we need and we even got a load from one of the Govt agencies which supplied us with rotten “Rot” rather than something we could use on the farm. . This week and next we will be focussing on bringing in FYM to the farm along with neem cake.
We are talking to JCB owners to get the plant pitting done as job work - lets see if we are successful in that.
I also heard that the Govt subsidy for creating ponds has now been withdrawn - that is a problem for us… we were hoping to create a couple of big ponds in the farm to harvest rain water and also leverage the same for aquaculture.
It rained well on Ugadi day and has helped us identify where we need to spruce up our bund wall to prevent water from coming in to the farm so additioanl work on that to start next week.
A quick update - With Rains arriving it was important to get our private road in order and thats what has been the focus. We also managed to mount the Containers on top of the stilts that were constructed.
We were considering using Agur for drilling/ digging up pits but from what we heard the max size we get is 1 feet width and that really is not enough for us. Also because we need the pits to be ready latest by 1st week of May to ensure that the pits have enough time to dry up we will be bringing in more JCB to get the Layout completed. There is however the Nursery and the cattle shed and a few more bits and bobs to be completed however with insistent rains a lot of our plans have been pushed back. We however have FYM stocking up and will be able to to start filling up the pits as soon as we are in a position to get the JCB into the farm to dig up the pits…
One thought we are pondering -
The thought we have is if we should spread seeds for GreenMulching and considering that we will have the JCB on the farm it does have its drawbacks. The plants could be dead by the time the JCB has done its job!! so back to thinking…
The lockdown has hampered our progress and we are all sitting at home and waiting to start again. In the mean time tried with the Farm manager to get the planting pits marked out - turned into a fiasco with the JCB driver saying its all a mess and the manager saying - this is the best. Considering this is a crucial piece - have put all activities on hold pending farm visit.
The thing which needs to continue and we are struggling is - FYM - Seems like the rate increases magically when we go to see a FYM Dump. I am wondering if any one can share what they pay per tractor load and any other expenses they pay for the load. Also if there is a supplier contact for good FYM who can supply in and around Gowribidnur would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you Shivakumar. Today morning i started getting FYM at 3200 per tractor load. I will reach out to the contact as soon as i know how many loads this current supplier can give.
Is there a dairy farm near by Gowribidnur which sells cow dung. I wouldn’t mind setting up a processing center soon so that people dont get fleeced like this.
