Survey and Fencing - Part 2

Waiting for the surveyor to come had become an endless wait.  So many execuses everytime i call my broker or farm supervisor. Meanwhile time is running and seasons are changing. I cannot keep endlessly waiting for the sequence of events to happen. The sequence and hence the constraint is as follows;

If you want to do farming, you need fence and fencing require survey to happen.
Survey require all registration to be complete and surveyor to be in place along with VAO. Since this is physical group activity, waiting for everyone's convenience is wasting time.
 

This is how the land looked with top soil with sand and salt.


In order to keep myself busy and the team, i decided to press on levelling the ground, come what may. Removing thorns, levelling and ploughing twice are the targets set for the team.  I am going to do very minimal or nil ploughing subsequenlty in the farm after organic cultivation starts. Therefore i want to complete the activity now and re-kindle the soil.  I also had the curiosity to see what does the bottom soil looks like.  As you can see in the below pictures it is not bad. Strokes are following tractor proves, there is life in soil.

 


JCB pulling down the thorny bushes (Burma weeds)



Having started the activity, the resource was consumed continuously.  Nothing can be stopped. Around 600/- to 800/- per hour for JCB and Bulldoser each and depending on area and complexity they must be run for 2 to 3 days for 8 hours per day.  We also had adventures like JCB bucket failing, the joint getting broken. Spares used to be obtained form nearby town Tirunelveli with downtime of around 3 days.

After all that you get satisfaction to see a vast expense of your land devoid of thorns, bushes and exposing the red earth.



Finally the levelled ground

Then on a fine day, the surveyor and VAO were invited as per their convenience.  This second visit also cost me more, but gave a satisfaction that atleast something is getting completed.  In farming activity, you are so pushed to the corner (like a waiting patient in Govt. Hospital taking the token) sometimes that you start accepting everything as Gods gift.

Farm got surveyed and borders identified.  Now I have to depend on the guy who got the briefing from the surveyor and some of the markings on the ground we had made with pebbles.  If there is any land dispute, that has to be settled on the way.  So far as the guy to the east who created dispute, we thought of giving some buffer zone while fencing.  We can sort out this later. This decision was taken so that we proceed with rest of the activities.

On the north, I asked my guys to leave about 12 Feet distance for any lorry or vehicle to pass through. Even I wanted to have the main gate towards north.  Ahead of my land was alread a plot whose ends were irregular. Moreover my land was being used by villagers as road for long time. Therefore I did not want to block anyone's access to go inside.  Sacrificing 12 feet for a length of around 200 feet made sense.

Next is west.  There is a main road at an elevation (Tank bund). Already there is some buffer space for road widening. Otherwise I have no issues on finding the border.

Finally the south. Here is the catch. I was told there is a worshipping stone in this area. Now to allow it inside or leave it outside is the question. I took a call to leave it outside so that those who workship (Once a year, i believe someone comes to workship the deity) donot disturb farm activity. Presently this consists of few broken stones (Someone attempted to make some pillars ages ago). It could be some demi-God of village or a family deity or even a samathi of a saint. I donot know. I allowed around 25 cents outside and planned to fence not disturbing the spot.  Over a period of time, planning to plant some trees over there.

Otherwise south is full of small land holdings with paddy cultivation going on whenever there is water.

Thus border identification is completed. next to plan for actual fence.