In April 2016, at the height of his profession within the Silicon Valley, San Francisco-primarily based Vivek Shah determined to quit his task and return to India along with his wife Brinda who holds a Masters in Printmaking.
Why?
To construct a natural farm.
“Living in San Francisco made us plenty more aware of our surroundings. Being full-time specialists ourselves, we commenced realizing how our lifestyle becomes fluctuating closer to turning into unhealthy due to our schedules,” says Vivek.
The couple’s first step to take charge in their health changed into to start mastering to cook together.
“And yet, certainly one of our biggest struggles changed into, we didn’t know in which the meals we had been eating every single day became coming from,” stocks Vivek.
The location the couple resided in changed into full of tall fruit-bearing trees. It reminded Vivek of his adolescence while lifestyles turned into simpler. Climbing timber barefoot, scraping your knees and fingers, and the pleasure of plucking fruit off and then devouring them.
He wanted to make that pleasure a part of his existence once more and growing their very own meals became how they notion they may get pleasure from it again. The couple set out on an adventure to examine the ideas of permaculture in a state now not ways far from California. It turned into this ride that bolstered their resolve to go back to India and set up their farm.
“When we had been touring for the course, we got here throughout a strawberry subject. Just as we had been taking part in the view, we saw a person dressed in a white protecting jumpsuit spraying a few liquids on to the crops. It sent a sit back down our spines. Imagine if the people had to wear a defensive layer to prevent the aspect-outcomes in their spraying chemicals, we have been eating the food that becomes being grown like that. It now not only affected the purchasers, the growers but additionally the surroundings at large. This becomes our turning point.”
And so, in 2016, the duo quit their jobs and returned to their domestic kingdom, Gujarat.
Interestingly, there was no opposition. Their households had been supportive in their preference and past elated that the couple had decided to come back domestic.
“We had no historical past in agriculture. But the path we did helped us immensely in understanding the numerous techniques we could undertake to construct a natural and sustainable farm. We determined to kickstart our journey with the aid of developing what we favored to consume first. Being Gujjus, it needed to be mangoes,” he laughs.
In 2017, an hour and a half of drive far from Ahmedabad, they offered a ten-acre land located on the outskirts of Nadiad, Central Gujarat, to create a farm which could no longer best satisfy the wishes of their kitchen and make them independent of the market however additionally take in commercial operations.
And that’s how Brindavan occurred. From making sure soil fertility with techniques along with green manuring and managed grazing to harvesting rainwater thru pits and ditches, the duo exercise techniques that assist them utilize the farm resources to their maximum ability.
The plot is split into seven exceptional subplots all of which get hold of unique natural remedies to restore and sell the increase of vegetation.
From pearl millet (bajra), wheat, potatoes, moringa, bananas, papaya, Jamun to timber, the couple grows plants that range from business to semi-business.
A blend of industrial and experimental farming, some of their different techniques which encompass plug nurseries, no-until vegetable farming, planting windbreaks, hen-loving plant life, butterfly and bee loving flowers, are directed in the direction of pest and soil management in some way or the opposite.
They have dug trenches and pits on 10 in keeping with cent of the overall land to capture each drop of rainwater that falls on the 10-acre farm. This guarantees that every desirable monsoon cycle helps harvest five to ten lakh litres of water.
The duo has also built a natural domestic with soil, cow dung and stone. The soil to construct the earth walls of this domestic was additionally sourced from the farm itself after they dug a pond. One of the motives to dig this pond changed into additionally to tackle the difficulty of effluent water that a local contractor was letting into the field.
“We had been bowled over due to the fact we were trying out pleasant to not allow any shape of chemical input our farm. We decided to address this by using amassing this water in a pond. We coated the pond with water-purifying kinds of flowers that could dispose of the impurities before it made it to the pond, which captures 1.Five to two lakh litres of water.”
Aiming to turn this pond into a natural world pond, Brinda and Vivek are quickly going to introduce fish and geese in it. Vivek is likewise operating on building a larger water-treatment plant that might sooner or later enlarge into a secondary enterprise.
Instead of the use of pesticides or concoctions to hold pests at bay, the couple uses vital natural pest management techniques at the farm like growing fragrant flowers which includes tulsi, lemongrass, and so forth. At the outer obstacles of the sector. These help create a defensive guard and keep fruit flies and pests at bay. Another approach to make sure that pest attacks do not motive whole loss, is intercropping or multi-cropping which is the process of developing two or extra crops on the identical piece of land. To make certain that no longer a single leaf at the farm is burned, all the farm waste is processed to make compost.
