Being There Yourself

A small note on custodianship

Pathway leading up to the lighthouse. Picture credits to Kirti Karmarkar

It was completely dry, rocky, heavily grazed, eroded and hot! This was Telangana on the high Deccan plateau. Kirti comes in with large shade hats and water bottles, purpose and persistence. 

Now, 5 years later Arbor road estate is on its path to regeneration. This 11 acre landscape is dotted with several ponds, recharge wells, percolation pits and the landscape is teeming with over 12,000 trees!

All thanks to Kirti and Anand who've made the shift, moved into the farm and rolled up their sleeves, which is when the real change started happening on land.

Quite often, we hear people wanting to work remotely on a farm, do weekend / urban farming and pursue other satellite sustainability dreams. One thing that has proven to be extremely effective is for the custodian to stay on land and observe the changes slowly over a period of time. This would help one understand the context thoroughly and make decisions that are precise and cost effective. Some pertinent questions like- How does the water move through the land? What are the wind flows like? What are the animals moving through the site and how? What is the vegetation like in varying seasons? A full fledged sector analysis would emerge from there on. Slowly, one starts engaging with the local community, mapping the skills in the vicinity, understanding the resources available locally and so on. 

Depending on the size of the land within 3- 6 months of observations one would’ve slowly walked up to a vantage point. To know where to begin. The first step of a long journey has begun. Chronicling slow changes, frantic note making and picture taking has started. It’s intuitive how the landscape and the local ecology understands the presence of a human. Changes start happening slowly. One would traverse the same paths, grasses grow around the trails. Well trodden paths clear up. With a sicateur in hand one would understand when to chop and drop. Drier, degraded parts have your personal attention now. Cover crops and perennial grass seeds line your pockets. Bare ground is draped in mulch now, fence species and biomass trees are slowly yielding. The land now is softer and greener. All it took was a fence, a small shelter and your presence. Observation is key, from here on design is easy and implementation a breeze! 

Arbor road estate now has brought up it’s borewell levels from 1600 to 600ft, they have a homestead, cafe and cottages built earth blocks from the large dugouts, trees with self generating biomass and fruit trees, a machan that hides in the forest trees, large water bodies varying from 20 KL to 250 KL with a perennial source of water,  and lots of dogs :)