My Journey Into Creating a Food Forest

Seeds of Inspiration

The thought of creating a food forest first struck me when I began following Sadhguru’s Save Soil campaign. His warnings about soil degradation and the looming crisis of food insecurity made a deep impact on me.

At the same time, I had been following Vijaya Venkat’s diet principles for many years, which deepened my interest in nutrition, healthy food, and conscious living. Later, I completed a teacher’s training program in yoga and naturopathy at Yoga Vidya Niketan in Vashi.

All these learnings nudged me toward farmland. As I mentioned in an earlier post, acquiring land was not easy. But looking back, I feel it was worth every bit of effort.

The Land and Its Challenges

The land we bought was far from ideal—it was malran land, rocky and shallow with an average soil depth of just two feet.

Not exactly the perfect starting point for cultivation! Still, we believed that with care, any land can be turned fertile. The fact that a river bordered our property gave us strength and hope.

This river is at the downstream of Shirota dam and managed by Tata Power. They release water periodically to ensure farmers get sufficient supply for irrigation. To be doubly sure of access, we also dug a borewell before finalizing the land. We struck water at about 300 feet—though the yield was limited, tests confirmed it was potable. That solved one of our most critical concerns: drinking water

Early Lessons

Coming from a city background, I had zero prior experience of working on farmland. Perhaps that’s what deepened my yearning for farm life. To prepare, I did a short permaculture course and designed the farm layout with one of the trainers. I also watched videos of Andrew Millison on permaculture which were very inspiring!

Some of the first lessons I carried with me were simple but powerful—observe the land carefully, harvest every drop of rain, enrich the soil with natural inputs, plant wisely to capture sunlight, and leave space for firebreaks and biodiversity. Of course, once we started, I quickly learned that theory and practice rarely match!

Preparing the Land

We wanted to dig pits on our rocky, undulating terrain. Since this work didn’t require electricity, we could proceed even while waiting for it. So we began working on land profiling. We got a contour survey done

We had to use a Pokland machine to shift massive boulders—some as big as 8 feet long.

Since the land was highly uneven, we also wanted to create small flat patches for growing vegetables and grains. Instead of importing soil, we chose to desilt the river and use that rich, fertile silt for filling selected areas on the farm.

With minimal filling, we managed to create enough cultivable patches for our own consumption, while also improving the river’s flow

We had a quarry, dug nearly a hundred years ago for the construction of the Shirota Dam wall. We transformed it into a pond by building a retaining wall to hold the water.

Since our land lies within a watershed area, a natural stream flowed through it. We widened the stream to improve its flow and, alongside it, created a small pond and a bund to hold as much water as possible.

Building the Approach Road

We used left over stone chips from our quarry to strengthen our approach road. The work made a big difference, though a major stretch still remains to be properly laid with more stone.

For now, it holds up well enough—especially with our sturdy Thar navigating it with ease.

The Fencing Struggles

We bought the land in January 2023, giving us a few months to plan before the June monsoon. Very quickly, we realized that without fencing, planting was pointless—animals would destroy young saplings overnight.

While most farmers around us used cement poles and barbed wire, we wanted something stronger and longer-lasting. A GI chain-link fence with a live green cover seemed ideal. The catch? It required electricity for installation, and getting electricity on farmland is never simple.

Also I realized that unless I stayed near the farm, nothing would move forward. After searching around, I was fortunate to find a very large bungalow to stay in temporarily. Living there, all by myself, was an experience in itself—both strange and memorable.

At the same time, we decided to create a basic living and working base on the farm itself. Our solution was unusual but practical—container homes.

We bought two containers from Navi Mumbai port and refurbished them with basic facilities:  toilets, electrical points, a small store, a room for labour, and one for ourselves.

By April, just as we finally got electricity after three long months of chasing the MSEB, we shifted the containers onto the site.

It felt like the first true step of living on the land when we saw our container glowing in the darkness of the wilderness. It was a very happy moment!

Meanwhile, the fencing contract itself turned into a local political drama. The person from whom we had purchased the land insisted that we hire his friend instead of our chosen fabricator. To avoid conflict, we reluctantly agreed, but the decision backfired. After taking an advance, he kept delaying with endless excuses. Finally, pressed for time, we had no choice but to return to our original fabricator. By then, however, it was already late May, and the monsoon was around the corner.

 These were truly stressful times, and I had to keep reminding myself that I had come here to escape exactly this.

With monsoon fast approaching, we rushed. Another setback came when a nearby MSEB pole collapsed, cutting power. We had to rent a generator, which increased costs. By God’s grace, the fencing was completed just before the delayed rains arrived.

Planting for Biodiversity

Came the big question: how much land should we plant in the first year?

My instinct was to start small—about one acre—so we could learn. But my husband and the horticulturist argued that whether one acre or four, the costs would be the same. And since trees take years to mature, delaying plantation meant losing precious time.

Torn between caution and impatience, I gave in. We decided to plant almost the entire land.

We used JCBs to dig trenches along slopes. It was difficult to work along the contours with JCB. We discovered many locations having nearly three feet of soil depth—an unexpected blessing.

But we compromised on accuracy to work faster with JCB, later realizing why permaculture emphasizes “go slow.”

Encouraged, we began listing more large trees to buy. We were advised to source from Dapoli nurseries for healthier saplings at better rates. We bought saplings under two years old for stronger growth.

Since Keshar and Ratna mangoes thrive in this region, we planted about 40 of each, along with a handful of other mango varieties for diversity.

To this we added a mix of fruit trees like Chikoo, Guava, and Jackfruit; citrus varieties; a few berries; spices such as Kokam; Cashew and other local species; and some indigenous medicinal trees. We placed large trees about 12–15 feet apart, with smaller ones in between.

Along the periphery, we planted hardy natives like Karvanda for a natural live fence. In all, more than a thousand saplings went into the ground during that first monsoon. We also made sure to tag each plant, as we wanted to be certain we could remember the variety we had planted.

Eager to taste the produce at the earliest, we also cultivated paddy in a natural low-lying patch of the land.

Plantation Challenges

By late June our saplings arrived, just as the rains began. With the help of the Poklan, we pushed some soil back into trenches, but uneven mounds and swale-like formations remained. Once the heavy rains set in, machines couldn’t work, and even moving soil by hand became exhausting—the wet earth was simply too heavy. In some places, the trenches followed contours perfectly and water seeped into the ground as planned. But where the slopes were misaligned, runoff carved gullies, eroding soil and washing away manure.

Luckily, because our land has almost no clay, water didn’t stagnate, and the young trees survived and slowly adjusted.

Caretaker story

During this time, we were also searching for a caretaker. Ganesh, who had sold us one parcel of land, would stop by at night as a watchman, but we needed someone full-time. After four months of asking around, we finally found a man in the last week of July who seemed perfect—polite, knowledgeable, and trustworthy. We felt fortunate. But as we later discovered, the hardest lessons in this journey were not about the land or the weather, but about people.

Working in the Open

It was the first time I had spent so many hours under the open sky, working through the long summer months from March to July. The land then was mostly barren, with hardly any trees for shade. The heat was relentless, yet I pushed on, racing against time to finish as much as possible before the monsoon arrived.

Just before the rains, I experienced something unforgettable.

A cyclone-like storm swept across the valley. Sitting in my wobbling car, I watched the entire landscape transform within minutes—dust rising, trees bending, the horizon blurring. It was both unsettling and awe-inspiring.

From the day we bought the land until we planted our first crops in July, the six months were incredibly busy. In spite of the harsh weather and endless tasks, the farm carried a strange energy. The rawness of the land, the unpredictability of the skies, and the urgency of the season—all of it fuelled me in a way I had never felt before.

Moments of quiet rest in nature’s embrace renewed our energy and reminded us of a vitality we hadn’t even realised was missing.

Lessons from Early Permaculture Attempts

From my limited knowledge, I still managed to apply some permaculture principles:

• Observation: Studying terrain, flora, fauna, and making a planting list.

• Rainwater harvesting: Widening the natural stream, digging swales, and creating ponds.

• Soil enrichment: Using Jivamrut from cow dung and urine.

• Sunlight advantage: Planting to capture eastern light.

• Fire safety: Leaving 20 feet around fences as firebreaks.

• Biodiversity: Planting berries along the riverbank to attract birds, and using polyculture to promote  cross pollination and biodiversity mimicking natural ecosystem.

But I also fell short in key areas:

• I rushed planting before the rains without learning enough about trees—going against the permaculture principle of observe before you act.

• Planting windbreakers on the rocky western side proved difficult.

A Journey That Continues

Despite the hits and misses, we created a comfortable place to stay and also completed our first monsoon plantation successfully.

More than 1,000 trees took root that year, and for the first time, our barren malran land began transforming into the food forest we had dreamed of.

Three years later, as I reflect, I see the importance of patience and continuous learning. Recently, I completed an 11-day permaculture course at Aranya, under Mr. and Mrs. Koppula near Hyderabad. It opened my eyes to many aspects I had missed earlier.

🌿 Stay tuned—the story of our food forest has just begun.

In my upcoming posts, I’ll share how we learned to understand trees more deeply, and how we began growing vegetables, strawberries, watermelons, sweet melons, herbs, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and grains like rice, Nachani, Khapli Gahu, Bajra, Corn, and many more (https://www.instagram.com/the_sacred_grove_?igsh=czR0a3hxN2wwajBu ) using natural farming principles. I’ll also write about the care they need, the challenges we faced, and the new ventures we’ve started.