Ex-Techie Turns 11 Acres of Barren Land Into a Self-Sustaining Food Forest Near Hyderabad

Venkateshwar Talla vividly recalls his first night on the piece of land that is now GreenAcres. 

“I pitched my tent, whose roof opened out to the sky. It was a full moon night, and by around 4 am, the sky filled up with stars. It was beautiful, and I thought to myself, ‘How can I get city people to experience this?’” 

That night was the precursor to Venkateshwar’s idea of a farmstay model, encouraging campers to sign up for a night of stargazing, enveloped by a carpet of green, the result of years of organic farming practices. 

His purchase of the land back in the late 90s was a spur-of-the-moment decision, a “crazy impulse”. 

“While working in the IT sector in the United States, a few of my friends back home in India came up with the idea of collective farming. I liked it. So, six of us got together, acquired a 30-acre piece of land 60 km from Hyderabad city near Yadagirigutta in 1999,” he shares. Each stakeholder had five acres to himself; a love for nature, and overlapping memories of trips to their native village farms, bonded them. 

Venkateshwar was thrilled with his buy-in, but a year later, when he visited the land, he found it lying in abeyance, neglected and overgrown with thorny bushes. His friends’ response to his quizzical looks was, ‘We realised farming is not our cup of tea.’ But Venkateshwar saw potential; he bought six more acres to add to his five, moved back to India for good in 2003, intending to harness the potential of the land in positive ways. 

For three years, the techie and his family lived in the main city, making weekend trips to the farm — “With our toddlers in the backseat of the car we would drive down to the land every Saturday morning,” his wife Anitha recalls. For the next 48 hours, Venkateshwar would spend his time understanding the plot’s needs, intuition, instinct, and, sometimes, well-seasoned farmers from the village guiding him. And with every weekend, the land would progress a little more. 

If Anitha had to pick a favourite spot, it would be the swing. “I can spend hours on it, observing nature and unwinding,” she says, adding that from her vantage point, she can see her husband busying himself with the farm’s upkeep. 

“He’s always looking for the next thing to do, and I tell him to pause. He’s put so much effort into this place, I keep telling him to sit back and enjoy the view.” But Venkateshwar isn’t one to heed leisure advice. To him, the land is the result of a commitment that played out over 500 weekends and 25 years of work, taking it from a barren 11 acres to a forest with 350 fruit trees, pulses, rice, vegetables, and teak. 

Moments spent on the farm are filled with déjà vu creeping up on him. 

“While growing up, I would spend summer vacations at my uncle’s village, Jammikunta in Telangana. There were fields all around, and that became my visual idea of what a farm is. But years later, when I surprised my uncle with a visit after I’d completed my engineering studies, I couldn’t see any green. I asked him where all the fields had gone, and he said, ‘You are standing on them’, pointing to the concrete jungle around,” Venkateshwar shares. He resolved never to let his land meet the same fate.  

Transforming the anatomy of a barren landscape 

Your platter at the farmstay promises to be a canvas of deliciousness and variety. Chana dal vadas (fritters made with split chickpeas), pappu chaaru(lentil stew), roti pachadi (stone-ground chutney), mirchi bhajjis (fried, spicy, and tangy green chilli fritters). 

All the meals served at GreenAcres are prepared from the produce grown on the land. Desicows form the source of the milk, curd, butter, hand-churned paneer (cottage cheese), and ghee served at home, while fresh eggs are sourced from the hens. The coconut groves yield nuts that are milled into virgin coconut oil.

But when Venkateshwar started out on the land, it was a blank slate, albeit one that provided ample room for experimentation. He did not have any experience in agriculture. 

“All I knew was that I wanted to grow trees and start a nursery. So, I started planting saplings,” he says. In 2006, he made a switch to organic farming, channelling the cow urine and dung from the cows he purchased to make manure. 

But the soil wouldn’t give in easily. “The topsoil was barely six inches at the time. It was clay soil, and hardened very quickly. So, we had to be consistent with mulching and composting,” he explains. 

It wasn’t easy work, but the stains were badges of joy. A series of experiments is how he describes the nurturing of the land, learning what permaculture was, understanding why mango trees would prove tough to grow, learning why testing the soil was important, and figuring out how crop rotation between paddy and pulses worked. 

Neem proved to be a versatile tree to have; it loosened the soil, he says. In time, the potential of the land that was veiled all along started to show in shades of green. 

A homestay made of repurposed beauty

The homestay to camp model came about as more senior citizens started visiting the property, and needed a comfortable space to live. Once you enter, you can almost feel a sustainable aesthetic ricocheting off the walls. Venkateshwar shares that he was sure the space had to be built sustainably with no air conditioning. 

“And we don’t need it! Even during the peak summer months, it is cool,” he says, adding that he spent time trying to find more ways of passive cooling by planting more trees around the land. The homestay has five rooms for guests. It’s premised on a load-bearing structure built with bricks, while wood from antique, repurposed doors and windows forms the decor. 

The homestays’ electricity needs are met with a 3 kW solar setup, while a two lakh litre rainwater harvesting system meets the homestays’ water requirements. And you’re invited to experience this sustainable piece of quiet.

As for Venkateshwar, whenever someone asks him what the monetary returns on his decision to start the farmstay are, he asks in return, “How do I measure the satisfaction of eating my own food? How do I put a price on that? It’s priceless.”

Book your stay here. 

All pictures courtesy GreenAcres

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com