Pre Planting Video

We plan on planting Melia Dubia saplings tomorrow - exactly after 7 months since we started land improvement. It is a big day for all of us here at Savera Farms. Following is a video prior to planting. Next time, I shoot a video, you should see the saplings on the ground!

Pre planting video..

Sub surface Tank construction: A mini project in itself..

Things are starting to heat up at Savera Farms while the temperatures have finally started to decline. We are 3 days away from planting Melia Dubia and all of us have been busy with drip installation, manuring, and getting ready for planting our first batch of saplings. Due to a busy schedule especially on the infrastructure front like shadenet, water tank, drip etc, I have not been very regular on the blogging..
This post is on construction of Sub surface tank which essentially will be used for water storage. Three borewells will feed in the water and there will be one outlet that will irrigate approx. 30 acres via drip pipes. Due to a big acreage and moderately high water requirement, a tank was deemed essential. In addition, storage is essential especially in areas with regular power cuts.
My photo timestamps show that it took us 7 weeks to complete this. The dimensions are 40 ft x 40 ft x 5 ft and has a storage capacity of approx 2 lakh liters.
Below are some of the pictures of the tank construction and hopefully will give you a good idea on this engineering marvel!

JCB was able to dig the pit in approx 8 hours..

Constructing a solid foundation is imperative due to pressure exerted by underground water level during monsoons. We used a mix of cement, stones and sand.

Walls are erected..

Working on the partition walls..

Reinforcing the side walls with 'chicken mesh'. Cement was plastered over the mesh to give the structure more strength.

Plastering in process..

One of the three borewells is finally functioning.

Engineering marvel is finally up and functional!!
















Next week, we will be attaching SST submersible pump to the drip setup. More details on drip in the coming weeks!

Videos on YouTube

You can view videos of our farm development work at http://www.youtube.com/saverafarms.
It will be useful if you watch them in chronological order by clicking on Date Added link on the right side of the screen. This will give you a sense of activities that we completed in a sequential manner.
From time to time, I will add some of the more informative videos on the videos link on my home page.

Recipe for making EM

EM stands for Effective Microorganism and is used in decomposition of organic matter. We used it in the decomposition of coir pith. There are multiple solutions available in the market. Maple's EM.1 being one of them.

Take 1 kg of black jaggery and powder it.

Add about 1 litre of water in a container and mix it with ground jaggery.Then pour the solution in a 20L can.

Add 1 litre of EM to a 20L can. Add approx. 18L of water to the 20L can. Leave a little space at the top.

Ensure the lid is tight.


















Open the lid once in the morning and evening for a minute. Continue this for 7-10 days until foul smell is prevalent. At this point of time, EM is ready for application. Make sure the can is placed in a cool place and not exposed to direct sunlight.

Once ready, each litre of 'activated' EM can be diluted in 20L of water. The resultant solution can be used for decomposition of organic matter.