Second phase completed at vetane 40 kms towards east of satara

(2nd from left) Mr.Balasaheb Jaganath Nalawade and (3rd from right) Sarpanch,Mr.Shankar Nalawade(Vetane)

Owing towards elusive monsoon we wanted to plant trees at places where they would be taken care of regularly and effectively.So we came up with an solution of distributing trees to the farmers.Planting trees with farmers atleast assured us that they would survive independently of how the monsoon is going to be.We thought of selecting the kind of trees which would excite farmers to surely take care of the them,so we were inclined to provide them with fruit trees like coconut,mango and lemon which would also generate some revenue for them.Mr.Balasaheb Jaganath Nalawade(H.O.D electronics depatment,Y.C.I.S) was of great help in this activity.He along with his brother surveyed the village and made list of farmers that had ably taken care of their previous plantation and made a list to whom the saplings
should be distributed.
We distributed total of 120 trees(60-coconuts,40-mango,20-lemon).Chetan Nalawade,Gautam Firodiya and Pushkar Firodiya of Me and Tree were well recieved
by the sarpanch Mr.Shankar Nalawade and the people of vetane.

First Phase Completed on 30th August

Me and tree completed its first phase of planting big saplings on the barren mountain of pedhya cha bhairoba as mentioned in the previous post.We were supposed to plant 40 saplings but Aloysius Nadar provided his trax for transportation of saplings from the government nursery to foothill of the mountain so we saved on the amount of Rs.250/- and that helped us add 10 more saplings.

(left to right) Aloysius Nadar and Gautam Firodiya

Plantation wasn't easy as we thought,carrying the saplings from the foothill to the top,sapped our energies.Initially we were only six guys Gautam Firodiya,Aloysius Nadar,Sagar Shinde,Dattaray Shinde(this guy had come from malgaon some 40 km from satara),Chetan Nalawade and me,so it took almost 10 trips for each of us to carry the saplings and tools to the mountain top from the foot.

(left to right) Gautam Firodiya,Chetan Nalawade,Aloysius Nadar,Dattaraj Shinde and Pushkar Firodiya

We had hired a labour to dig pits 1.5 X 1 ft for planting in the saplings at the rate of Rs.5/- per hole,this turned to be a bad bargain:initially we assumed that we could make in atleast 20 pits by ourselves and so we would need to pay him only Rs.150/- for remaining 30 which would be Rs.50/- less than his entire day wage of Rs.200/- but we were physically exhausted by our trips uphill and he had to dig all 50 so we ended up paying him Rs.250/- that was Rs.50/- more than his one day labour charge.But we have noted this and will not repeat the mistake next time :)

The first sapling planted

Some how after regrouping our energies we started planting the sapling but after 32nd sapling we had given up succumbing to the exhaustion and decided to plant remaining the next day .This exhaustion could have overcomed if we would had carried some refreshment and water bottles(this was another thing worth noting)
But then Harshad Firodiya,Ajay Borate and Vishwas Kunwar joined us and helped us achieving our target of planting the remaining 18 saplings,they did get refreshments and water for us.Even the group of the senior citizens joined by the end of it and everything ended as planed




The senior citizen group who are going to take care of the plantation



This is how the mounatin looked on 30th August 2009