Sadhana Forest Food!

Volunteers here eat 100% vegan food with no heavy spices or processed foods. I have felt very nourished and healthy here. Some volunteers make an effort to eat a diet enriched with mostly raw foods, and plants from the garden as well.

(more to come)

Tree Planting Methods

Volunteers have been getting up every Monday-Thursday morning at dawn to file into the forest and plant or tend to new trees. Again, volunteers continue their tree care and planting after breakfast! Here are some of the methods that are used, which have been found to have an 80% through 90% success rate! These methods have been developed here to specifically suit the climate and dry, depleted soil. 

                     

Sadhana Forest uses “swales and mounds” to plant trees. Swales, carved into the ground, collect water to increase the amount of water absorbed into the ground and prevent soil erosion. The soil that is removed from the ground in these ditches is mixed with humanure and charcoal soaked in urine and piled above ground in mounds about 4 feet away from the swales, in which the tree is planted. This allows a welcoming environment for the beginning phases of the baby tree's life. 

Sometimes, trees have also been planted directly in the ground and "bunds" of soil were used to direct and conserve water.

At Sadhana Forest, volunteers have been using the "Wick Irrigation Method." This method can be used in extreme climates with eroded soils and difficult microclimates. The main purpose of this method is to increase water use efficiency. A plastic water bottle protrudes from the ground with a cotton wick coming from the bottom. The wick is coiled and buried under the roots of the newly planted tree. The water is placed in the water bottle, and is absorbed by the cotton wick. gravity brings the water straight to the roots of the tree. This way, over-irrigation is prevented for water conservation purposes and the water is brought directly to the roots, instead of sliding over the dry topsoil or dispersing. Solutions or plant food can also be added as a direct source of nutrients for the tree. Also, no build up of salt or other minerals will be left over from evaporating water, and it is extremely beneficial because this method does not require electricity, pipelines, planning or operation!

Pia dancing with a wick irrigation bottle at the crack of dawn :)

Trees here have been planted using plastic tubes, which the mound is built around. Once the tree is planted, the tube is filled with water. Once the soil in the tube is completely saturated, the tube is removed.

Taking out the tube!

A method is also used in order to build fertile soils out of nutritionally poor soils (red clay soils), so that the soil will hold onto moisture and hold nutrients. First, an even surface is cleared in large patches. Then, human compost is mixed in with the soil in a giant pile. Dry leaves and organic matter such as weeds or grass are collected, and charcoal is soaked in urine over night. It also helps to soak the dry organic material overnight in water. Alternate about 12 thin layers of the organic matter, then the compost, then the charcoal. The charcoal is like a nutrient batter that is "charged" with urine, which will be an available supply of nutrients that will not wash away during heavy monsoon/rainfall. Last, mulch the pile with dry grass or leaves to keep the sunlight off of the pile and retail moisture and reduce weed growth. Watering the pile often is important. Providing shade by creating a structure and planting legumes over the pile is helpful because it will keep the pile moist and the falling legumes contribute added nitrogen!

Increasing Soil Fertility

The baby trees in the "Tree Nursery"

Once the trees have been planted in open and dry land, they must be covered in mulch, which is any organic matter that will break down over time to increase soil productivity. It also acts as a sponge to hold moisture and shields the ground from direct sunlight. Mulching must be maintained and done repeatedly for each tree until the forest develops a canopy, which will eventually make its own mulch ("leaf litter") and shield the newer trees from the sun. To attain mulch, volunteers have collected bags of leaves from the forest, use ripped up cardboard or cardboard sheets that have been thrown away.

Daily Life at Sadhana

I have woken up every Monday-Friday at 5:30 am to the sound of loving music which is played by the "wake up caller." Singing, guitar, drums, etc are played by the same person for a week at a time. I enjoyed having a human alarm clock and many mornings I laid in bed a few minuted contemplating my gratefulness for the choices I have made that had gotten me here.

After waking up, I have 30 minutes to dress myself, eat a banana, use the bathroom, wash my face and and brush my teeth before joining everyone as they meet in the Morning Circle. In the Morning Circle, each volunteer leads everyone in a stretch and the sevas (volunteer work for the morning) are chosen. The morning circle ends as everyone goes around the circle and hugs each other, lots of "good morning"s and lately we have been having morning ginger lemon tea together before seva, as well!

First seva begins at 6:15. Since the sun is only starting to come up, this is the time in which we can do the more active, physical labor such as planting trees, mulching, patching bee holes in the huts, cutting overgrown plants, and digging holes before the sun comes up and becomes scorching hot. First seva is considered more challenging work because it may involve carrying heavy tools or cans of water, or digging in rock hard ground, for example.. but half way though we usually all hang out for a few minutes and have a banana break!! The sevas are done with a spirit of motivated collective love for the project and have always felt rewarding to me.

Breakfast begins at 8:30. Community announcements are commenced at this time, followed by a chime to indicate a moment of silence. I have been taking this time to think about how amazed I am that so many people sit around me from all over the word, each with completely unique stories, cultures, and physical geography that they have experienced, as well as to contemplate the organic farms in the villages that have grown the food, and all of the lengthy work that the volunteers ave put into preparing food for 50-150 people during first seva. Breakfast usually consists of multiple kinds of chopped fruit, and some kind of pourage or grain with coconut and syrup (locally sourced jaggery aka palm sugar).

Volunteers gathering together for breakfast 

Second seva begins at 9:30. For me, this period had usually been spent managing the Zero-Waste Hut and sorting trash. Other people do work such as cooking, gardening or tree care. Sevas during this time of day are less intensive, but equally important! I often find these shifts to be enjoyable because I can easily chat in addition to my work and learn where people come from, what their plans are.

Lunch time is at 12:30 pm and then we are free to do what we like for the rest of the day, unless we have other community shifts that we have signed up for, such as main hut cleaning, solar panel turning, welcoming new guests or dish sanitation, for example. During my free time, I have been tending to spend a lot of time enthusiastically learning about each of the people who volunteer their time here, meditating, attending workshops or involving myself in events in town, visiting local shops and restaurants, visiting local farms and eco-minded projects, and swimming in the mud pool.

Every Night of the week, there is some kind of event going on after dinner. Monday night there is a Q&A about Sadhana's goals and values (usually led by the founders), on Tuesday night volunteers gather for the Sharing Circle, on Wednesday night entertainment pursues into the late evening in the main hut as the Open Stage AKA the Non-talent Show commences, Thursday is a night out in town, and Friday night people from the villages and town are invited to come and take a full tour and learn about Sadhana Forest as well as join us for dinner and join us for the Eco-film Club, where we watch a film related to human unity and/or ecologically-minded living. On weekends, breakfast and dinner is offered at Sadhana Forest but we are free to do as we like.

Before and After

Auroville Before Reforestation:

                                                      

 Auroville After Reforestation:  (http://www.globalrestorationnetwork.org/database/case-study/?id=10)

"Around two hundred years ago, the Auroville plateau and its surrounding region were covered in forest. In fact, a stone was discovered in Kilianur dating from 1750 that described the local king hunting for elephants and tigers in the nearby forest. In 1825, trees were felled in the Jipmer area between Auroville and Pondy, to drive away the tigers. Slowly the forests were cut down to build cities like Pondicherry and towns like Kalapet. Timber was used for export, and the British accelerated the deforestation process by allocating plots of land to anyone who would clear it and cultivate it for a year. Much of the land was then left fallow, and under the violent onslaught of the monsoon, erosion inevitably began. The last remaining plots of forest in the Auroville area - 2,000 mature neem trees - were cut down in the mid-1950s for timber to make boats. In less than 200 years, land that was once forested had turned into an expanse of baked red earth scarred with gullies and ravines carved by the monsoon floods. Each year tons of the remaining topsoil were swept into the nearby Bay of Bengal, and much of the land that remained became a desertified wasteland. By the end of the colonial period the extent of the forest was reduced to 1% of its normal distribution, and in subsequent times all of these reserve forests have become highly degraded. The timber trees of any size were removed, and then the remaining scrub was harvested for firewood and subjected to constant browsing by goats and cows. The only surviving forest areas that have any resemblance to their pristine state are widely scattered pockets around temples, and these rarely exceed a few acres." (http://www.globalrestorationnetwork.org/database/case-study/?id=10)

In the 1970s, an A township of people from around the world began as people came to reforest the area. Shade was created and soil began to be more fertile as forest canopies developed and succession continued.  Sadhana Forest has continued these efforts on remaining degradaded and deserted land land that has been designated to us by the Indian government and the township of Auroville. Since the beginning of the project, water conservation has returned water to the wells of local villagers, soil has gained fertility, wildlife is thriving and about 30,000 trees have been planted.

Sadhana Forest in the beginning of the project:

 (http://www.thebetterindia.com/25578/guess-what-tourism-did-to-a-70-acre-arid-land-in-puducherry-sadhana-forest/)

Sadhana Forest more recently: 

 (http://www.thebetterindia.com/25578/guess-what-tourism-did-to-a-70-acre-arid-land-in-puducherry-sadhana-forest/)

Sadhana Forest before: 

 (http://www.thebetterindia.com/25578/guess-what-tourism-did-to-a-70-acre-arid-land-in-puducherry-sadhana-forest/)

Sadhana Forest after intervention:

 (http://www.thebetterindia.com/25578/guess-what-tourism-did-to-a-70-acre-arid-land-in-puducherry-sadhana-forest/)

Tree Planting

More to Come!!!

     

Cow Sanctuary

There are very content cows roaming around Sadhana Forest. There are two adult cows and two babies. The adult female cow has adopted one of the babies! They are not used for labor or dairy. They are cows that would have been killed because they are not "productive" agriculturally.

Sustaining Life One Action at a Time- Community Systems

One of the reasons that I chose to come to Sadhana Forest is to observe the ways in which people are living symbiotically with ecological systems. Her are some of the ideas that I found. I hope that they will inspire new ecologically-minded ideas in other people's lives!!

Architecture:
I have woken up every morning in a bed frame made of wood and tied together with coconut fiber rope in a dormitory hut that is made from compressed Tetra Paks.

Tetra Paks are the cartons that are used to package milk, juice and various other liquids and foods. These containers allow food to be protected from contamination by bacteria and other microbes, meaning products can sit on the shelf for months without going bad. Tetra Paks can not be fully recycled because they are made up of a number of components which are layered: paperboard (made from wood), polyethylene (a type of plastic) and aluminum. Since the polyethylene (plastic) and aluminium, cannot be separated by the recycling process and remain combined as a “polymer”. These materials are collected and compressed into sheets locally in Auroville, India. It has been used to construct both the dormitory hut and the showers as a durable and low environmental impact building material

Other personal huts,bathrooms, the kitchen, a meditation hut, and the main community building are all made with traditional natural building methods in which bamboo is tied together with coconut fiber rope and roofing is made with woven coconut husk, as shown in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUE1yLHxi6s

Daily Water Conservation: Here at Sadhana Forest, we do not have running taps for showers, hand washing, laundry, or running water for toilets. Instead, we are practicing water conservation by filling buckets directly from the well on-site and carrying them to the showers and laundry area, where we pour the water into hanging buckets that have holes in them to shower (using only biodegradable soap and shampoo) and wash our laundry by hand (it dries quickly in the heat!). To wash our hands, there are stations that have an aluminum cup on a stake with a hole on it, which we manually pour water into and wash our hands with completely biodegradable soap. To catch runoff water, banana trees have been planted in a ditch next to the hand washing stations, which are water intensive plants (aka the "banana sponge method"). These methods allow us to intricately control how much water we are using for each activity, and be careful not to waste any. I enjoy my showers here and take pride in being able to take thorough showers with half of a bucket of water with ease, and I have not felt inconvenienced by the lack of running water for hand washing.

                        

     

         

Tolets: Toilets at Sadhana use no running water and do not create waste. There are both metal and coconut hut bathrooms with separate pee toilet and a poo squat toilets (squat toilets are the culturally common in India). These are dry compost toilets, in which sawdust is mixed with the contents instead of "flushing." Urine and composted poo are both successfully used as fertilizer ("humanuer") in the reforestation work. 
You can check out this website to learn more about humanure and its value: http://www.humanurehandbook.com/

            

Feminine Hygiene: So we do not create waste, non-disposable feminine hygiene products are encouraged and sold on-site. I highly recommend these products and I have been using some of them for years, before coming to Sadhana. I have been using cloths pads (https://ecofemme.org/) and silicone menstrual cups (such as these: divacup.com). These products have saved me money, are an alternative to toxic pesticides that are used to grow cotton used in tampons, save time and create no waste. 

Food/Cooking: We have someone from the community go into town and pick up vegetables and grains from local organic farms (two in particular that I know of). Many edible greens are grown right here in the forest garden and can be used for salads and smoothies. We also grow some papaya and bananas in the garden. All of our meals are "zero waste," which means we minimize food waste and every food scrap is composted or given to the cows. 

Meals are cooked on wood burning, energy efficient rocket stoves. This stove was originally designed for clean cooking in the developing world (where wood smoke fires cause millions of deaths, as well as a huge contribution to deforestation). There stoves direct heat completely to the food, unlike common stoves which release heat into the air without directing it directly to the food. Thus, high temperatures are created with very little fuel needed and minimal smoke is produced. Food is all cooked in bulk for about 100 people each meal using only wood that is found and collected from the forest and none is cut down. 

How to build a rocket stove!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uh2VExcdbY

Dish Washing Stations: since rocket stoves produce ash, instead of using any kind of dish soap we have been using the ash to scrub and clean the dishes!I have learned that wood ashes have been historically used as a source of lye in soap making because the ashes chemically react with the oils/fats in food! We have a system in which the dishes are scrubbed, dunked in 3 buckets of clean water, and then left in a large basin to soak in hydrogen peroxide for 15 minutes. 

Solar Electricity: All of our electricity is solar. We often have about four hours/day to charge our electronic devices depending on the amount of sun that is available (often we have more on weekends because we use less of it for logistics and presentations) If there is not enough sunlight, volunteers may produce bicycle-powered energy themselves.

Zero-Waste Hut: This is one of my favorite sevas to do. I understand the management of trash to be extremely important because human populations is only growing, space for landfills is becoming more scarce, and our landfill systems do not put nutrients back into the ground as quickly as we remove them! This involves sorting ALL of the thrown away objects aka MOOP (Matter Out of Place :) ) and putting it "in place." A service called eco-services in Auroville collects all of the plastic, paper, and metal. Cardboard is reused as mulch in the forest, paper is used to start fire in the kitchen, non-synthetic fabric and food and composted, plastic bags are stored for reuse, and some objects are collected to use in the community for building purposes or any other creative needs.