The Hyderabad Collective, Hyderabad

The Hyderabad collective was blessed with wild, forest-friendly Sitaphal produce. We also witnessed the last of the monsoon grasslands that are extremely beneficial for the development of a forest ecosystem. The Lake Soil Experiment was initiated to improve the soil health of the cultivation patches and make them more suitable for growing. We hope to see favourable results. Our staff at the farm was successful in procuring the waste rice straw from nearby villages. We are using this ‘waste’ in several farm activities like mulching, making veggie beds and composting. The first stage of forming an ecosystem is in place with a focus on veggie beds where resilient, native species are planted. Windbreaks to protect veggie plants were planted too. The upcoming months are full of anticipation, hope and more attempts to enhance the ecosystem.

The Food Production Zone (FPZ) is being planted with annual crops as we speak. It is expected to produce food for 100 families, including grains, pulses, veggies and fruits. Our nursery is overflowing with saplings that will quickly find their way into the bio fence and windbreaks on the farm. The water harvesting structures functioned beautifully this season, with the swales and the check dams doing their job and the lake filling to the brim. The Hyderabad Collective is a beautiful sight right now. The food processing unit, common dining, guest house, access roads and internal roads are the infrastructure works we will be starting in November.

The journey of the Hyderabad Collective always amazes us at Beforest. From a landscape that is unfit for cultivation to complete security for the on ground staff and now the surplus going to general consumers as veggie baskets. Just WOW!.

Our Food Production Zone trials have worked out really well and we have done two rounds of veggie baskets. Each basket would have 5 kgs of veggies including leafies, veggies, gourds, etc and is door delivered to interested members in Hyderabad. The basket changes depending on what is available that week but continues to be a wholesome mix of different kinds. This was well received with the baskets getting sold out within an hour of announcement on both occasions.

Once the trials are over, the entire planned food production zone would be planted by mid-October, and that would be orders of magnitude more than the current trial patch.

The stream bed exercise is completed and we now have 53 different structures on the 9 stream beds. The running water now walks and remains to be seen how the land responds to this. Fingers crossed!

With a variety of different vegetables, our very first Bewild Veggie Box is ready and fully subscribed! Harvested in the morning and delivered before the sun sets to your doorstep, this is just the beginning to going beyond organic. We hope that this box not only provides families with vegetables to cook, but along with it an integrated community sharing their recipes and experiences with every changing season and its raw foods palette.

The water harvesting is working beautifully at the Hyderabad Collective with the swales and check dams harvesting water and giving rise to amazing micro climates in the rocky landscape. It is always amazing to see our imagination turn to reality and planting water is easily one of the most gratifying experiences of the collective process.

Before we begin food production at the Hyderabad collective, we want to give the soil some nutrition by growing nitrogen fixing plants as cover crops. These plants have roots with small bulbs that are the home to bacteria that help in the breakdown of nitrogen into more accessible compounds for the plants to use, like ammonia. After growing them for 45 days, they will be mixed into the soil, thus providing the next set of food crops accessible nutrition from the soil.

A newly built check dam, one of the 20 odd built this season, has transformed its surroundings. Although the water stays for a few days after the rain at this point, it is still valuable for keeping the soil moist and how easily it changes the microclimate around it!

We recently found that a check dam on the ridge was forming a pond. It has now been dug and packed with stone, to expand its holding capacity. As it holds water for longer periods of time, this could potentially be a walking spot around a small pond park. We may also be able to draw out water from here for activities like small construction and for irrigation purposes.

As our preparations for the monsoon get rolling, we organised our first members activity – a seed-bombing event. Members and their families spent a productive day at the collective, interacting with our on-ground teams, learning how to make seed-bombs and spreading them across the collective. The fruits of their efforts will be visible in a few years. We hope to organise many such member initiatives in the near future.

Work at the Hyderabad Collective has been progressing at a considerable pace. The full time security staff now have new cabins ready, while the final plan for the housing clusters has been set up and the approval process initiated.

Our efforts at transforming the landscape are also shaping up well with the swales and 3 water channels done, resulting in some really beautiful landscape interventions especially on channel s9.1

The diversification plans are well underway and the saplings are all prepared and ready for transplantation. However, we can only transplant after the first few rains. The lake is almost dry and we are evaluating our plan of deepening it. The elaborate process of planting is preluded by the pit digging and pit preparation. After painstakingly making close to 8000 pits, the team has an elaborate process of creating alternate layers of bio matter and manure to make sure the survival rates are really high.

Work on the check dam is going on smoothly and the team seems to have now picked up the art of deciding what check dam goes where and we are hoping the three main channels that we have undertaken will have a significant impact on the soil moisture levels.

Besides this, there is a lot of action at the Hyderabad Collective. Pit digging, bund creation, collection of stones, nursery preparation, and more. So in spite of the summer, the collective itself is a scene of bustling activity. We have also prepared options for the housing clusters 4 and 5 which has only added to our anticipation of how well the collective is going to shape up.

The new year has been full of activity. As we move towards our long term plan of self-sustainability, we have taken the first steps to ensure all staples for the staff come from the farm.

The veggie and leafy patches have been designed and we will be starting with the bed-making and planting later this month. We have also started planning for nursery operations for the coming monsoon. We estimate creating almost 20,000 saplings to execute our plans and this process will also start this month. However we need to first identify the planting plan and sourcing the seeds and saplings, both from nurseries and from the farm. 

The housing plan for Clusters 3 and 4 are in progress and we will be releasing the map in March. We have also built a nice garage for storing our equipment and vehicles. 

With the stream bed registry reaching completion and check dam sites identified, we will be

focussing on two of the streams for earth works this monsoon. We plan to empty the lake water which seems to be taking on a perennial nature by using it for irrigation so that we can further desilt the bed.

This year’s wholesome monsoon has worked in our favour to keep the lake filled to the brim and the springs overflowing with water. We expect this flow to continue all the way to December – January. 

Paddy farming in the backwaters of the lake seems like a good call and the crop so far is flourishing. The jowar experiment however hit a roadblock with stray cattle coming in and trampling the entire plot in one night. We have set up a night post in the middle of the field to guard against such incursions. The four hounds that we have added to the Hyderabad Collective family:

1. Chase – 5 month old Kanni
2. Kombai – 4 month old Konbai
3. Brownie – 8 month old indie.
4. Skye – 2 month old lurcher 

… will be night watchmen for now

The Veggie patch experiment over a small 1000sq yd plot has been a bumper success and is now catering to the needs of all 12 staff members on site. This season, we plan to expand this to around 2 acres and eventually to 8 acres. This should comfortably take care of the needs of 100 families. 

The bio-fence is emerging beautifully with a close to 90% survival rate. The team has done a magnificent job by erecting a 2 feet tall stone and mud barricade on the rocky boundaries, where a bio fence was not possible. This barricade will be populated with thorny shrubs to strengthen the barricade and create a bio-fence of a different kind. To put things in perspective, the stone for the barricade had to be hand-carried by the staff. We are in the process of procuring some equipment, including a tractor and a power tiller, to make things easier for them.

The permaculture team has come up with a strategy for food production and we have decided on the backbone water pipeline. We have also applied for grid connectivity for the bore wells,  which should materialise in the next month or two.