The way to Manoj Kumar IB’s abode is a abecedarian mud aisle hemmed in by undergrowth. Very ample copse on either ancillary of it casting their benevolent caliginosity in which we airing to the house. It stands in a allowance amidst a mini forest.
The one-acre at Edavanakkad was agilely fabricated into a backwoods by Manoj; he had to bulwark off attempts from his ancestors who capital to bright out the “jungle”, clip agrarian bushes and bandbox up their active space. He generally activate himself at allowance with people, who could not appreciate his aesthetics of absolution things be. Of not disposed to the brambles and weeds, of accomplishing a lot of things by accomplishing nothing. He assuredly had his way, and the backwoods about grew and thrived. His mother has arise about and at times alike participates in plucking bake-apple and leaves that are edible.
An electrical engineer, Manoj was fatigued to Attributes and ecology attention aboriginal on by advantage of his affiliation with environmentalist assistant John C Jacob. The concepts of accustomed living, attributes cure and accustomed hygiene affect him, but he does not affirmation to be an environmentalist or an activist.
“I accept consistently admired Attributes after assured annihilation from it.” His angle arise activity is badly fatigued from American biographer Daniel Quinn’s credo of not isolating man from Nature. “The two are not mutually exclusive. Man is a allotment of Nature, it is back we booty ourselves out the blueprint that problems arise,” he says. Manoj is amid the bodies who helped organise a account amoebic farmers’ bazaar at Kakkanad breadth bush farmers arise calm to advertise their produce.
Fruit forests
Data accretion is his breadth of able expertise, but his chargeless time is adherent to auspicious amoebic agriculture and association agriculture initiatives in and about the Panchayat. ‘Fruitful Future’, a abstraction he is alive on, aims at creating bake-apple forests. “It is not a adventurous abstraction at all. Anyone who has a allotment of bare acreage can breed one. It could be a accidental alternative of bake-apple copse such as guava, affection fruit, papaya, chickoo, mango or jackfruit. A bake-apple backwoods can alike be set up aloft a terrace,” he says. The abstraction is to bulb as abounding saplings in a bound space. “Even if they are buried abutting to anniversary other, they would abound depending on the availability of sunlight.” For this, he draws from Japanese farmer-philospher Masanobu Fukuoka’s ‘do-nothing farming’ principle. “The abandoned things we charge to do to actualize a bake-apple backwoods is to adapt the acreage first. Clean it out and adapt it for mulching by layering the amplitude with amoebic decay as abundant as possible. Then let it be as it is and abate animal interference. Very soon, earthworms and added micro bacilli arise and the acreage is ready. Sow the seeds of fruits randomly. Slowly, they abound and over time, become behemothic copse address fruit.”
Permaculture, agro forestry and baptize agriculture are capacity he is in the action of learning, he says.
Manoj is decidedly amorous about jackfruit, his own “forest” has calmly over 200 jackfruit copse alone. He collects seeds and brings them home breadth he creates clay beds and sows the seeds. Once they abound into saplings, he gives them abroad to those who appetite to bulb them. Back he gets ample orders, he accuse a nominal fee per sapling. Manoj has helped actualize a bake-apple backwoods for a acquaintance in Thrissur and he is in the action of talking to schools and colleges to animate the abstraction of a bake-apple forest. He uses bolt grow-bags for the saplings in adjustment to absolutely annihilate plastic. “The beyond abstraction is to accomplish bodies acquainted of association gardens, which a accumulation of bodies can do calm and account from,” he says.
He has not bought vegetables and fruits from shops for over three years now. Everything is accessible at home—from yam to pumpkin, assistant and its blossoms, a aggregation of appearance varieties, drumstick, chikoo, jackfruit, papaya, lemon, mangoes and coconuts to activate with. The timberline array is as diverse—njaval, anjili, ilanji, palm, cinnamon, agrarian chembakam, sindoora varikka (red-fleshed jackfruit) and alike adolescent teak trees. In summer, Manoj survives on fruits that the copse accord in plenty. “There is so abundant fruit, I accord them abroad to friends.”
His acreage has two ponds and a baby beck active through it, which swells and ebbs according to the tide. (Edavanakkad has the Vembanad basin on one ancillary and the ocean on the other). Butterflies, bees, birds and creepy-crawlies are approved inhabitants, says Manoj, who adoringly cajoles a moth caterpillar (kambili puzhu) into bridge over a accept arise its family.
Sacred groves
Manoj takes affliction of a afraid bracken a little abroad from his house, which belongs to his continued family. “Sacred groves accept built-in copse and animate biodiversity. Alike today, houses with acreage can carbon a archetypal of a angelic bracken by burying copse built-in to the region.”
Manoj is not apprenticed by an agenda, he speaks about things that he is amorous about unsentimentally. His forests and area are not manicured and what is advised aesthetically pretty. “I aloof appetite to accomplish the acreage I alive on fertile, so that added active beings can account from it, or not, I don’t know. If there is bare land, accord it to me, and I’ll abound a backwoods in it.”
