The Hyderabad Collective

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. 

At the Hyderabad Collective, we are getting ready for the monsoon planting with the creation of a sapling bank of 15-20,000 saplings. This planting will focus now on riparian zones (i.e. the interface between land and a water body e.g. a river or stream). Primary types being planted would be pioneers like Banyan and Peepal, soil builders and nitrogen fixers like Moringa and Gliricidia and watershed plants like Pongamia and Vetiver among others. 

As the design process for Housing Clusters 3 and 4 is being completed, the water plan for the place is also in progress. We are targeting to complete 3 primary stream beds before monsoon. The water plan is a mix of gully plugs, swales, earth bunds, check dams, de-silting of channels and more. At each point, we are focussing on our goal i.e. improving water or soil harvesting and designing accordingly. 

By the end of December, we are expecting the visual feel of the place to be vastly different. 

Our first target of having the staff live off the land is almost achieved with the staff solely depending on veggies from the farm. Our experiment to grow rice in the backwaters of the lake was a smashing hit. This should cater to the grain requirement of the staff and more. We are now moving on to our wheat experiment and see what the land allows us to do. Potatoes, onions and pulses are the last few food buckets that we need to grow. 

Our next step would be to plan for member families. This would involve planning the water supply and harvesting it, the sowing and harvest calendars. 

To address the first, we have started the first of its kind stream bed registry exercise in India to closely map the hydrology of the landscape and scientifically plan the structures that suit our goals the most. For e.g. in some places we are more interested in harvesting soil than water versus capturing and percolating water into the soil. We’ll soon be publishing a detailed report on this. 

We will be undertaking a second baseline study exercise in Hyderabad in January to see what impact we have had on the landscape. 

We are very happy to let you know that the design phase of the collective has kicked off and the economic, mixed and nature zones have been identified. We are undertaking an elaborate stream bed registry exercise, the metrics will help us understand the water flow and harvesting capacity of the landscape. This will quantitatively help us choose the harvesting mechanism for different areas of the collective. The housing clusters in the economic zones will be marked in cluster 1 and 2, accounting for 40 homes. The approval process will begin, post this.

Earlier, in September we had planned to use the receding lake waters as a potential rice cultivation plot and this has worked brilliantly. We now have about 45 rice bags which will easily cater to the staff at the collective. We should be left with plenty of excess as well. A herb patch, mixed with pest repellent plants like marigold is also being experimented with.

We are now at a stage where the only things coming from outside the farm for the staff are onions, flour and spices. The rest, like veggies and grains are all grown within the farm. We are on our way to self-sufficiency.

The focus for June was to ramp up our nursery operations to make sure we were ready with the required saplings for the bio fence by the time the showers come in. The team had to go all in on bringing the count up to 13000 saplings. We are happy to report that the monsoon came late but just in time for us to be ready. The team also had the foresight to make sure the digging and manuring of the pits were all done beforehand so that once the first few showers are in, we just have to plant.

By the end of July, planting for about 60% of the bio fencing is done. Our team has done lots of iterations to come up with a neat 2 m wide, 4 layered bio fence that is designed to detect the wildlife infringement on the food production areas. The philosophy we are following is simple, the bio fence is basically what we grow for the wildlife rather than for us. So they don’t have an added incentive to come in.

We also have three new residents at the collective – Brownie, Chase and Marshall. True to all things Beforest, we have gone local with our dogs as well. Brownie is an indie, Chase is a Kanni (Indian sighthound), and Marshall is a Kombai (Indian boar hound). They are adapting really well to the estate. Another big initiative we started at the collective is the cow shed. This is important for us as it marks our acceptance of bovines in the landscape. We need them mostly for the preparation of manure and also they are great at maintaining the grasslands. Once our cow shed is ready, we will be bringing in two bulls and two cows that a few members have graciously volunteered to give us.

In early June, we started on a mega project of desilting an old lake within the property. This silt is atleast four to five decades of run down topsoil from the hills above and we naturally expected it to be extremely rich in organic matter. Over the next one month we were able to create about 20Mlt of storage capacity in the lake. Within just 3 showers the lake was filled to the brim allowing us to experiment with a small patch of paddy and ragi.

In addition to water storage, our team came up with a very interesting idea of using the silt excavated to create a 2ft layer on previously non-arable sheetrock and use that as a bund for trapping water and also a veggie bed to hold it in place. These simple multi use bunds have comfortably given us atleast 3 to 4 acres of cultivable area which was previously just sheetrock. It is still an experiment but make sure you compliment the sta on their ingenuity if you happen to visit us.

The permaculture team in HQ also put in extra hours to finish the concept plan for the Hyderabad collective phase 1 and 2. This concept plan broadly identifies the housing clusters, the earth works required, the food production areas and the wilderness areas. In the coming months we will be filling in the details in each of these conceptual zones like the exact path in the housing clusters, the plots, what grows where in the mixed zones etc etc. Watch this space for more.

The phase 2 of the Hyderabad collective has opened up and if you did not have the chance to come to a decision in phase 1, worry not, you can come in now. Feel free to reach out on hello@beforest.co or login into our virtual office.