April 2022

Avoca Dabra – Suma Ganesh
WHIPPED BODY CREAM
April 9, 2022

Sometime ago a friend’s teenage daughter put it in my head that factory – produced skin care products are the most notorious to health, since we use them every day for years and years.

Since then I have been trying to reduce usage of artificial products all together

It’s been some years since I bought a lotion or a perfume. The process of making them is almost meditative and fun too, since you can experiment and feel fantastic when you get so many complements the outcome!

Here’s one such recipe. My entire family uses this body butter. The best part is that this one product can replace 5-6 products that are supposed to act on all parts of the body! 

Ingredients: 

  • Shea Butter (500 gms) 
  • Vitamin E Oil (1 tablespoon) 
  • Coconut Oil – (4 tablespoons) 
  • Optional – Castor Oil (1 tablespoon)
  • Essential Oil of your choice (Lavender, Orange, Peppermint are some of my personal favourites)

Steps: 

  • Melt the Shea butter in a double boiler (Pan over boiling water – Do not use the microwave)  
  • Take it off the heat and add in the other ingredients  
  • Refrigerate this mixture for about 10-15 mins, till it starts looking cloudy 
  • Take it out and whip it with a stand mixer or a whisk  
  • You can stop when the mixture looks airy and soft
  • At this point, you could add an Essential oil of your choice

What I like to do, is separate the mixture and add different essential oils and whip again for just a few seconds

You can make a lighter body butter by reducing the shea butter. Once ready, store the body butter in glass jars and refrigerate what you may not immediately use.

Continue Reading

Be Library
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS – APRIL 2022
April 9, 2022

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 TREES – JONATHAN DRORI

In Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori is the perfect gift for tree lovers and provides you a unique opportunity to discover the world though its trees.

Get enchanted by the stories of one of humanity’s most constant and varied companions. Explore fascinating stories about the redwood forests of California, the fragrant cedars of Lebanon, India’s sacred banyan tree or the intoxicating lime trees of Berlin’s Unter den Linden Boulevard.  

Trees have played a critical role in human life offering us everything from sanctuary from the heat under its canopy, to juicy colourful seasonal fruits and raw material for everything from building material to Aspirin and maple syrup.

​EVERY CREATURE HAS A STORY: WHAT SCIENCE REVEALS ABOUT ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR – JANAKI LENIN

We are surrounded by an incredible variety of lifeforms. They have evolved over centuries to develop features and skills that have helped them survive and set them apart.

Have you ever wondered the price giraffes pay for their long necks? The neck increases its blood pressure to pump blood up to its brain, which endangers its life every time it bends down to drink water. Or did you know that female nightingales decide which male will share the burdens of parenthood with them by listening to prospective candidates’ songs to gauge if they’d make good fathers. Much like a reality show contest for the animal kingdom

With ‘Every Creature Has a Story’, Janaki Lenin draws us towards the wonders of the natural world with her thought provoking and witty words. We promise that you’ll never look at nature in the same way again after reading this book.

Continue Reading

Roots & Wings - Suma Ganesh
SUMMER NOSTALGIA
April 9, 2022

I heard the first of a song by Koel yesterday. The sound loud and clear reminds me – Summer’s coming. The Indian Summer is harsh but there are so many wonderful memories associated with it – it’s impossible not to feel elated

As a child, my Summer vacations were textbook-perfect. We traveled to the hills of Coorg, where my Grandparents lived in a quaint house, with cascading flowers all around and sunny red steps. 

One of my best memories is of wild mangoes in cane baskets in the backyard, with us kids hovering around like bees till everyone arrived at the scene. Eating mangoes easily turned into a loved family ritual. Sitting on steps and the floor, we didn’t need to care about the juices dripping down. Stories, anecdotes, laughter – sticky fingers and sticky smiling happy faces. 

There was also a well, we could draw water from to drink and wash up. For us city kids this was as enjoyable a task as eating the mangoes! 

Moments of tranquility crept up on you at unlikely places. The sunny steps, the temple courtyard, the sight of the single avocado tree in my granny’s garden surrounded by bushes of flowers. 

I think eventually we are all looking for some such moments of peace. This, in my opinion, comes from the very basics – family time, bird song, plucking your own fruit, drinking from a clean stream of water 

My journey to beforest was in search of such peace, as has been for many of our members. I believe I am close to the dream with this step. I have also met wonderful people who share this dream with me. Looking forward to great times ahead.

Continue Reading

The Storyteller – Suhail Bagdadi
MAA, MAATI, MANUSH (Vol.7) … UNITED COLORS OF MANGOES
April 9, 2022

Someone once told me “You could gift someone something expensive and they might not remember it after a few years, but if you gift someone a box of mangoes, they’d remember you for a lifetime”. 

It’s April and it’s that time of the year again when the fruit markets start getting flooded with mangoes of all shapes, sizes and shades of green, orange and yellow. It’s also the time when harvesting at orchards across the Konkan region is in full flow. With the onset of peak summer, the entire region is under the magical spell of the intoxicating aroma of mangoes that hit you the moment you step into an orchard.

My earliest memories of visits to our orchards from December all the way through the month of May were of the transition in weather and the size and color of mangoes. From the flowering phase in December to the early glimpses of tiny seed like fruits in January, gradually increasing in size as the months progressed into summer. I even made up my own ‘Newton’s Law of Mangoes’ which stated that, ‘the size of mangoes is directly proportional to the rise in temperature’, and was pretty proud of it.

Back in the city, I’ve seen men heading back home, with the brightest of smiles despite a hard day’s work, that only possessing a few mangoes can bring. At home, the daily anticipation of checking on which raw mangoes in a box have turned ripe is an experience by itself. The act of taking a peek under the grass to check for a change in color and hoping to find a mango that is completely ripe and then triumphantly lifting it to get a whiff of the intoxicating sweet aroma is no less than joy of watching the best mystery’s unfold.

Though small, it’s one of the greatest joys in life, to hold up a ripe mango … the greatest of all fruits, one which can melt, the harshest of men.  

Continue Reading

Laws of Nature - Shaurya Chandra
RISING TEMPERATURES AND COMMODITY PRICES!
April 9, 2022

As the summer of 2022 sets in, we are not only preparing to face the usual challenges of water supply interruptions in our taps, but also the heat of higher inflation

Usually, the onset of summer is accompanied with increased energy consumption and higher bills to mitigate the soaring temperatures, but with inflation kicking in, woes are going to get accentuated further. Inflation affects every aspect of our lives. For food growers of our economy, this is a challenging time as the average farmer is also grappling with a huge surge in fertilizer prices which forms a substantial part of his input costs.

At Beforest, we aim to mitigate such variability, through the application of Permaculture. Through the application of Permaculture, which is a philosophy of agriculture and living, we aim to reduce energy costs by working with natural systems to the maximum extent possible.

With proper planning, we can harvest rainwater (a free gift from nature) and  increase the soil water retention, thus, reducing energy resources required for ‘moving water’ from its source to the place of usage. By using renewable power, energy prices are kept in control. On the inputs front, we are able to tide an onslaught of inflation by avoiding the use of fertilizers and only sparingly using bio-manures. It’s our hope that authorities implement such long term measures to make our systems more resilient.

Continue Reading

Watering Hole - Sunith Reddy
THE BEAUTY OF SUMMER
April 9, 2022

Summer has long been associated in our minds with sweat, discomfort, heat and a general sense of “when will this get over” in our country. Like all things natural, we look at summer in the same way one looks at a dry deciduous forest. It doesn’t have the green of a tropical forest, but it is just beauty of a different kind. In fact, summer and monsoon are two sides of the same coin and one would not exist without the other. So in that sense, it’s also a necessary part of the process. 

The landscapes in our collectives have transformed dramatically. The chilly mornings of February have given way to the early break of dawn and the heat setting in by 8:30 am. So naturally, we adapt to this change. The work hours shift towards the cooler parts of the day and the nights are a lot more active than they used to be. The beauty of it is how it showcases resilience. Rural India is the last place in our minds to have flexi-hours but here it is! 

The streams have completely dried up and the mighty Kembuva Poley at the Poomaale Estate, is reduced to a little trickle, as the estates downstream pump out water 24×7 for their irrigation. Forest systems have a large bandwidth of tolerance when it comes to changing conditions. This March for example, was the hottest in 120 years. But the Kembuva Poley hasn’t dried out completely and is still flowing. That is the trick about building resilient landscapes. There’s a lot of buffer built over the years, incrementally that one can survive the few shocks that come our way. 

Incidentally, and what might be very counter intuitive, our nursery work reaches a peak in summer. There are many reasons for this. Firstly its work in the shade, so the staff is naturally more inclined to do it over the estate work. Secondly, we are close to the monsoon and that means we need to get the sapling bank ready. That is the single point agenda at all the collectives in March and April. Poomaale is ready with its 3,000 saplings this time while Hyderabad is getting to its target of 15,000 saplings.

It may be summer right now, it may be too hot to work in the day, but it’s all hands on deck right now at Beforest.

Continue Reading

The Mumbai Collective
WELCOME ABOARD
April 9, 2022

With the seed community for the Mumbai Collective reaching completion, we will now begin due diligence for the land. We plan to decide on the structure for the collective in April, after which the planning process can begin. We look forward to giving physical form to this idea.  

An introductory meet to welcome the new seed community members at the Mumbai Collective is planned in April. Can’t wait to get things started

Continue Reading

The Poomaale Estate, Coorg
START PLANNING YOUR VISITS
April 9, 2022

Like at Hyderabad, the Poomaale Estate has also been completely subscribed to and there is a lot of on ground action to look forward to. With the LLP agreement in place we are now moving to have the master service agreement drafted by the second week of April.

Formalities for handing over the private estates are underway, while the Blyton Bungalow and Estate Manager’s house near completion. Expecting a handover by 15th April, we anticipate a spate of new members and visitors lining to see the estate.      

On the coffee front, we closed processing of harvest at 150 bags of dried cherries and are now proceeding towards pruning of the coffee trees. Our efforts towards increasing the diversity at the estate are running according to plans, with 3000 saplings ready in the nursery, waiting to be planted. And finally, the blossom showers came in 2 weeks late, but as they say ‘better late than never’.

Continue Reading

The Hyderabad Collective
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
April 9, 2022

March ended with a bang with the Hyderabad Collective reaching 100% subscription. We now have 90 members for the 135 acres and a waitlist too. We are now moving ahead with the operational procedures. While the LLP agreement is in place, the Master Service Agreement is being drafted and will be out for signing in April.

As we prepare for the coming monsoons over the next 3 months, we have set ourselves a goal of creating a bank of 15000 saplings. These would include a variety of pioneer species serving various functions ranging from soil building to nitrogen fixing. We aim to cover the riparian buffers, bio fences and some of the nature zones.

Work on the check dam has also been taken up on 3 channels – S2.1, S4 and S9. While the work on the S4 channel is done, S2.1 is in progress.

In addition to all the progress on ground, life has also been buzzing at the Collective. We now have a staff strength of 15 accompanied by live stock of 12 and free range hens who are now a part of the family. Incidentally the hounds seem to have taken well to the hens. 

Continue Reading






Bitnami