Bella Vista our farm in Hoskote -- a 25 year project in sustainability.

 

                  Hoskote as it was when we bought it 25 years ago

Over 25 years ago my eldest son David went for French tuitions to an Anglo Indian teacher named Miss Davenport. He took French as his second language in his ISC as he wanted to score well which Kannada would not help him to do. During the class the teacher said to all the students -- my relative wants to sell a 2 acre piece of land in Hoskote so if anyone is interested please call me. David pricked up his ears as he knew his mother was crazy about wanting a plot of land to grow all the trees her heart desired. The phone rang and Miss Davenport said Mrs de Nazareth? My heart sank as I wondered what David had been up to. Gingerly I asked -- Yes Miss Davenport? Expecting a barrage of David's misdemeanours which I was used to!

Oh I have a piece of land in Hoskote belonging to Miss Barbra Webster and we want to sell it. David says you would be interested.

My heart stopped beating. Of course I wanted to buy it. And in typical Marianne, impulsive fashion I agreed to her price on the phone without seeing the land.

The first time we saw it was when we went to register it with Dads lawyers --  DaCosta and DaCosta! We registered the sale, money changed hands and we drove down to the property. When I saw it my heart sank. Tears stood in my eyes with shock. Look at the picture above. It was just a waste piece of land -- karaab to the core.

No point getting upset I thought in my usual gungho style. And we ate their cucumber sandwiches and drank their delicious coffee and went home. My heart was in my feet and I wondered what we could do with the great idea of a farm that had swallowed all my savings of one lakh.

Another view of the horrible piece of land I bought!

It had eucalyptus trees planted by the owners to prevent squatters but it was an arid, horrible piece of land, which sloped from right to left with a lot of its top soil eroded. To stop further erosion I decided to buy a truck load of granite stones and along with my sons David and Andrew ( Steve was too tiny) and my husband Gregory, we built a check dam, which you can see us standing on to stop further erosion. It was just a gut feel decision, as I had not had my UN training on sustainability at the time.

Then there was no money left to do any more and I left it alone for over a decade.  Maybe more than a decade till the boys grew up. However I HAD to forcibly step in and enclose the place when a whole swimming pool of the lovely red soil was robbed by thieves every night and being sold to gardeners in Bangalore. There is always a God that steps in to help and a convent in KR Puram was upgrading their walls and so gave me their chapdi kals at a reasonable rate. We transported the stones to Hoskote and began the labour of enclosing the 2 acres. The final icing on the cake was my buying the old convent gate which had a lot of strength left in it!

 The farm today is a paradise of 25 years of work.

The villagers refused to let us enclose the property. No one encloses their land here and how will we go from the front to the back they demanded. So forcibly they made us give up 10 ft by 2 acres all along the property for a road. So we enclosed the front and the back and the sides we bought kucchas and barbed wire and enclosed the whole property. One corner I had no stone so I planted bamboo which is a wonderful hedge once it grows.

Then began the laborious process of employing a man and digging a bore well. Dad stood with my husband Greg one night, while the bore was dug and we hit water at 300 feet. I had to be at home with the babies. We were set now-- or so we thought. In no time all the farmers were digging bores and the bore dried up. So we had to buy tankers of water to look after the graft mango and chickoo trees I had bought from Lalbagh. Dad was clear, be scientific and educated-- buy only graft fruit trees.

Hundreds of chickoos too!

Twenty five years later I am so glad and happy that I listened to him. All the fruit trees give heaps of fruit and we get a steady supply of chickoos, mangoes, avocados, Jamuns, custard apples, Ramphals, Amlas, and massive Jack fruit. 

However water is a huge issue, so we Rain Water Harvest aggressively in both a big RWH pit and also in injection wells which I had put down 20 years ago. These wells have brought up the water table so high with the excess rain, that both the bore wells are working and the entire farm is green and happy.

  The rain has brought us a HUGE crop of Ramphals this year.

  Not only are the farm workers happy, we also are really happy that we are back in the farm and enjoying the fruit of 25 years of money well spent.