The Return on Investment of Farming
August 5, 2019The Farm That Inspired Us
August 5, 2019Whither Monsoon? Let’s build Resilience.
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Here’s today’s weather map of India, to kick off a newsletter about some very pertinent topics and updates.
It’s deep into the monsoon season, and there’s hardly any clouds or rain!
This is something that should worry us all. The ecosystem is broken, and the effects are not “a few decades away” anymore, as we have seen in Chennai, and across Maharashtra and elsewhere. Even Kerala!
This is precisely the kind of thing we set out to solve (should’ve started much, much, earlier) and that you have an opportunity to help with, participate in, and create an island-of-sanity option for yourself.
So, some updates.
Poomaale – the Wilderness Collective in Coorg.
- The detailed contour survey is nearly done – we’re starting to do a tree survey this week.
- A team is in place and tasks planned for the monsoon underway.
- The place has seen a few showers and the stream’s flowing thick and nice.
- We’re signing up the next lot of members at the current prices.
Alphonso By The Lake – 70km from Bangalore.
- We have 5 members in the seed community, and are looking for 3 more for this to be a go!
- The deadline for the above is July 3rd.
- A lot of folks have seen the property, so we’re staying optimistic
The Hyderabad Collective
- The earlier location has been abandoned for now, given a breakdown in negotiations
- We’re close to closing a 100+ acre space 21km from the Ring Road, in a pretty, hilly landscape. We’re accepting 10000/- as a seed community commitment for this. The final price for a 1.5 acre option is likely to be in the 38.x – 40.x range, with a 650 sqft home as usual.
Other Efforts
- Beforest is helping Nrityagram, the dance school outside Bangalore, become self sufficient in growing their own food, with help from their own community. We’ve already done the earthworks, and started to organize the community effort and volunteering.
- We’ve adopted JungleBox, an enthusiast effort to encourage and help folks do a DIY balcony/terrace/community garden. We’ll soon be launching AskBeforest to help kickstart a community, provide help and resources for this.
- We’re also helping a group in HSR Layout convert a nearly abandoned park into a healthy ecosystem with food growing as well.
Collectives 1-2-3
Many of you have asked us about what collectives are, how do they get formed etc. So we wrote it up – here’s the links that describe all of this :
As always, we’re available at hello@beforest.co and at Sameer +91-98451-80207 or Sunith +91-91672-70272
