“Living in San Francisco made us loads greater aware of our surroundings. Being full-time specialists ourselves, we started out realizing how our lifestyle becomes fluctuating towards becoming bad due to our schedules,” says Vivek.
The couple’s first step to take their health rate became to start mastering to prepare dinner together.
“And but, one in every of our biggest struggles turned into, we didn’t recognize wherein the meals we were eating every single day changed into coming from,” shares Vivek.
The vicinity the couple resided in changed into completely tall fruit-bearing trees. It reminded Vivek of his formative years when existence became simpler. Climbing trees barefoot, scraping your knees and fingers, and the pleasure of plucking fruit off after devouring them.
He wanted to make that joy a part of his existence once more, and growing their personal food become how they thought they might get pleasure from it again. The couple set out on a journey to study permaculture principles in a kingdom not far from California. It becomes this experience that bolstered their clear up to return to India and set up their farm.
“When we were touring for the course, we got here across a strawberry subject. Just as we were playing the view, we saw someone wearing a white protecting jumpsuit spraying some liquid onto the crops. It despatched a chill down our spines. Imagine if the workers needed to wear a protective layer to prevent the side-results in their spraying chemical substances; we have been ingesting the food that becomes being grown like that. It not simplest affected the consumers, the growers however also the environment at huge. This changed into our turning point.”
In 2016, the duo stopped their jobs and returned to their domestic state, Gujarat.
Interestingly, there was no opposition. Their families were supportive of their desire and past elated that the couple had decided to come home.
“We had no historical past in agriculture. But the course we did helped us immensely in understanding the various techniques we should adopt to construct a herbal and sustainable farm. We decided to kickstart our journey using developing what we appreciated consuming first. Being Gujjus, it needed to be mangoes,” he laughs.
In 2017, an hour and a half power away from Ahmedabad, they bought a ten-acre land placed at the outskirts of Nadiad, Central Gujarat, to create a farm which might not best satisfy the wishes of their kitchen and cause them to be impartial of the marketplace however also take in commercial operations.
And that’s how Brindavan occurred. From making sure soil fertility with techniques that include inexperienced manuring and controlled grazing to harvesting rainwater thru pits and ditches, the duo practice techniques that assist them in utilizing the farm assets to their maximum ability.
The plot is divided into seven one-of-a-kind subplots, all of which obtain unique natural remedies to restore and promote crops’ growth.
From pearl millet (bajra), wheat, potatoes, moringa, bananas, papaya, Jamun to timber, the couple grows vegetation that ranges from business to semi-commercial.
A blend of commercial and experimental farming, a number of their other strategies, consisting of plug nurseries, no-till vegetable farming, planting windbreaks, chook-loving plants, butterfly and bee loving flowers, are directed toward pest and soil management in some way or the opposite.
They have dug trenches and pits on 10 consistent with cent of the overall land to capture each drop of rainwater that falls on the 10-acre farm. This ensures that each accurate monsoon cycle facilitates the harvest of five to ten lakh liters of water.
The duo has also built a herbal domestic with soil, cow dung, and stone. The soil to build the earth partitions of this home was also sourced from the farm when they dug a pond. One of the motives to dig this pond was to address the difficulty of effluent water that a nearby contractor was letting into the sector.
“We were taken aback due to the fact we had been trying out satisfactory to no longer permit any form of chemical enter our farm. We determined to address this by gathering this water in a pond. We coated the pond with water-purifying sorts of plant life that would get rid of the impurities before it made it to the pond, which captures 1.5 to two lakh liters of water.”
