To make something out of nothing has never applied more than to what Rosie and Peter accomplished on their plot of land in Assagao, Goa. A barren 600-metre strip of land was transformed into a dense and plentiful garden that looks like a blatant act of favouritism on Mother Nature’s part. Yet no magic fairy dust was sprinkled on this Edenesque garden, it is solely the work of two pairs of hard-working hands and an intuitive permaculture-based outlook.
Permaculture extends from the concept of PERMAnent agriCULTURE or PERMAnent CULTURE vis-à-vis a responsible and sustainable way of using natural resources.
A quote by Simrit Maali (a notable Indian permaculture farmer) lifted from a well-written article by Maanya Sachdeva, describes permaculture as a way of “creating systems that mimic nature. It can encompass every part of life, from politics or economics to farming and building. There’s no one right way to be a permaculturist - you use the code of ethics and basic principles to design your space and life according to the resources and limitations around you.”
Although permaculture practices should be adopted globally, they are of particular relevance to India. Poor soil health, diminishing water resources, farmer debt and exploitation, as well as the degradation of wildlife habitats and biodiversity all come together as hellacious hurdles in the fight for a sustainable India’s future with fresh food.
Rosie and Peter’s approach to permaculture was to prove “that it is completely feasible for the average person to meet virtually all of their critical dietary needs in terms of nutrition, flavour, wholesomeness, safety, and variety.”
However, they first had to convert a piece of land that was “completely devoid of organic matter” into soil capable of hosting and sustaining a sizeable variety of plants.
Throughout this learning process, Peter and Rosie honed techniques designed for the “immediate application and simultaneous gradual regeneration of land.” Their methods paid off, as the once brittle and harsh soil conditions that rested behind their home have been converted into a soft bed of soil rich in nutrients.
Peter explained to documentary filmmaker Dan Hodgson, “We spent a lot of time simply focusing on fixing the soil...We planted things like radish and sweet potato, various root crops that we didn’t harvest, but left to decompose in the ground, which allowed air and water to start penetrating the soil, (thus) creating conditions under which the microbes we believe are really essential to good soil health, could thrive.”
Their toil resulted in dense and harmonious biodiversity reclaiming the land, which they now refer to as a ‘food forest’.
The determined duo set an insightful example of how to ensure a home’s food security, demonstrating that a single household can cultivate an eclectically bountiful and nutritious harvest, which operates as the sole food supply of a household. In fact, they proved a single household can grow a surplus of healthy goodness, and now share their excess produce with members of the local community.
Their plan to show how a backyard garden could support a household kitchen blossomed into a feasible lifestyle comprised of self-reliance, local food security, and immeasurable health benefits to the immediately surrounding land, wildlife, and quality of their personal health.
They have also demonstrated a natural aptitude for other permaculture inspired skills, such as:
“Water recharging & management, soil building, closed-loop fertility, carbon sequestration, food security, seed saving, species diversity, perennials, the revival and rediscovery of forgotten foods and animal husbandry.”
HG had to check out Peter and Rosie’s Jungle Farm and so they sent forth their most adventurous, and most expendable writer, me.
Armed with a rattling rental scooter and a cantankerous camera, I ambled around dusty farm roads for a good chunk of the morning, not completely able to distinguish which exact banana grove I had to turn right on. After disturbing the sanctity of Peter’s garden by calling him more times than anyone really should, I rode up to his shaded bungalow perched on the edge of an expansive field.
I was guided by Peter and his formidable head of hair through the garden’s gate made of repurposed branches, and we walked down to an oval resting area in the garden, featuring a hammock and a couple chairs cast under the canopy of various trees and plants. It was there we spoke about the garden he and Rosie created.
I must point out that my few personal attempts at growing plants have been marred by misfortune - well, either that or resounding ineptitude and laziness. Peter and Rosie, on the other hand, have displayed a strong talent for horticulture through their diverse swathe of vegetation. That being said, when Peter, this knowledgeable source on permaculture, spoke to me – a guy who single-handedly killed a Frangipani tree AKA Plumeria Rubra, several bush-like plants whose names still remain unknown to him, and an orchid in under a month – it not only intrigued me, but really made me open up my eyes to the mountain of benefits a small garden can yield.
After I better understood what Peter and Rosie accomplished at their idyllic home in Assagao, I was even more eager to explore Peter’s garden. And what better place to start off than the bee boxes full of fresh honey.
Peter opened up one of two large wooden boxes raised above the ground. He revealed an ocean of buzzing bees flitting about golden honeycombs extending from the downward slits in the box. I watched Peter slice away a chunk of glistening honeycomb, moving his hands around the massive hoard of bees with a relaxed ease. He then said, “Give me your hand.”
Peter’s voice has the slow, mentholated calm of an old-school disc jockey - a quality that makes it very easy to trust him, without really thinking too deeply about what he’s saying, or the consequences attached to what he’s saying. As I placed my hand in his, he instructed me to stick out my finger and moved it with his own hand towards the bombinating honeycombs.
I had never touched fresh bee wax before and marvelled at how it held round pools of rich, unadulterated honey like the rivets of a waffle hold syrup. I revelled in this new experience for all of a millisecond before sting, sting... sting. Apparently, my leftover cologne from the other night overpowered the scent of Peter’s hand, which the bees were accustomed to, resulting in three bees taking offence to the home invasion I had committed.
I would have howled like a pup who had his tail run over, yet, at the risk of sounding like a tree hugger, I found the garden was so ataractic I didn’t really mind the pain so much. Or maybe it was just because the honey was so damn tasty. Either way, Peter rubbed some honey on my balloon-like finger, and we set out to explore the rest of the garden, pleasantly chatting along the way.
With over two hundred plants, not only coexisting but thriving in this kitchen garden, unintentional plants get brought to life as well, specifically mushrooms. As I desperately crouched on the ground trying to get an unblurred shot of a strange looking mushroom, Peter took out his phone and showed me some seriously funky fungi he’d taken photos of.
As I followed Peter through the windy paths of the jungle garden, he incessantly picked leaves and berries off branches, rattling off plant names of which most I was clueless about. My taste buds, however, are not clueless, and each morsel of organic goodness Peter prompted me to try resulted in satisfied sighs. While I stuffed my face with this tasty, yet foreign-looking foliage, I heard Peter utter monikers, such as Katuk, Xanthasoma, Costus, Mayan Tree Spinach and Joyweed.
It was explained to me that these plants with names that could moonlight as funk bands were perennial plants, a term I wasn’t too familiar with before I ventured out to Assagao.
Rosie elaborated to Dan Hodgson that a perennial is a “long-lasting plant, you germinate it and nurture it once, and you end up with food for a very long time, could be three years, five years, twenty years, a hundred years.”
[If you like a more in depth explanation of perennial plants, click here.]
The point being, if you are trying to sustain yourself with a small, kitchen garden, it would be a wise decision to grow some perennials.
I was also surprised to find out several perennial plants native to Goa are considered by many to be weeds and are often plucked from gardens and tossed when they not only are tasty, but remarkably nutritious. A few of these plants that thrive in Peter and Rosie’s garden go by the names of purslane, peperomia, flamingo amaranth/celosia spinach, and Solanum nigrum. Look them up, and if you got’em in your garden, leave’em in your garden.
Of course, Rosie and Peter’s plot in Assagao is not exclusively made up of perennials. A few shining examples of their healthy biodiversity are their peanut butter fruit, sundrop mangosteens, kumquat, black guavas, and giant passion fruit.
I had never felt like such a city slicker before as I oohed and ahhed at the different colours of produce. I had never seen purple corn, let alone know that a lot of organic corn has a variety of colour other than piss yellow. Peter even explained to me that carrots were not even originally orange and that in the 17th century, Dutch growers cultivated orange carrots to pay homage to the man who led the fight for Dutch independence who (surprise, surprise) went by the name of William of Orange.
Yes, that is why you most likely eat orange carrots instead of yellow, white, or purple carrots, according to The Washington Post.
For a guy who grew up going on fishing trips and running around a South Indian hill station, I always fancied myself rather ‘outdoorsy’. To my chagrin, I realised I really didn’t know much at all about the natural surroundings I so happily spent my childhood romping through.
Shaping barren land into a thriving garden must seem more and more like an unfathomable magic trick to millennials, and I include myself in that passive insult. Yet immersing oneself in understanding how to cultivate healthy biodiversity, like Peter and Rosie have done, opens up a whole new world of knowledge and appreciation for the wide array of sustenance that is available to humans.
Do not make the mistake of considering these two as a couple of martyrs that have sacrificed their gustatory perception for the betterment of the environment. No grocery store has the sheer variety of wholesome and natural produce as this backyard garden. Just in the past few days the foods listed below are a few of the ingredients that have been a part of their diet: unripe banana, unripe papaya, giant passion fruit, turmeric, sour spinach, xanthasoma, butterfly pea, roselle, solanum nigrum, wild gooseberries, Chinese leeks, purslane, and the insulin plant,
At the rate that human population is expanding and the detrimental patterns that come with it, environmental hardship will continue to plague this world. As theatrical as that sentiment sounds, take into consideration that many ‘in’ the fight against climate change and mass cash cropping are politicians and faceless entities with thinly veiled agendas that are in stark opposition of dealing with these issues.
So why rely on those you wouldn’t trust with a five rupee coin? Instead, hoe a new path for yourself. After all, in the fight for a green India, you don’t have to run amok, decapitating people like political peons, you just have to grow a plant or two.
You can learn more about Rosie and Peter’s beautiful garden on their facebook page. With their 600 square metre garden, they consider themselves blessed and hugely oversupplied with food. They suggest that those with less available land would find that with just around ten metres per person, one could produce an astonishing quantity of food with the intelligent use of intensive gardening methods, making a 20 to 25 square metre plot for a couple quite sufficient to completely transform their nutritional situation.
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