Trees in Agroforestry

TREES ARE IMPORTANT

At EA Farms, we have planted all the following trees:

Black Wattle, Hickory Wattle, Mangium, and Forest Mangrove

Acacia mangium

Bread fruit

Artocarpus altilis

Jack fruit

Artocarpus heterophyllus

Papaya

Carica papaya

Sheoak, Ironwood, or Beefwood

Casuarina

Cannonball tree

Couroupita guianensis

Ebony

Diospyros ebenum

Fig 

Ficus glomerata

Vila

Limonia_acidissima

Mahwa, Illupai

Madhuca longifolia

Yellow jade orchid tree

Magnolia champaca

Mango

Mangifera

Sapodilla

Manilkara Zapota

Mountain Neem

Melia Dubia

Mulberry

Morus

Banana, Valai

Musa sp.

Nutmeg

Myristica fragrans

Kadambu

Neolamarckia cadamba

Vanni

Prosopis cineraria

Cherry

Prunus avium

Guava

Psidium guajava

Pomegranate

Punica granatum

Goose berry

Ribes grossularia

Rosewood

Rosewood

Soap berries

Sapindus emarginatus

Agathi

Sesbania grandiflora

Peenari

Sterculia guttata

Poison Nut

Strychnos nux-vomica

Mahogany

Swietenia mahogany

Naval

Syzygium cumini

Teak

Tectona grandis

Porti

Thespesia populnea

Lime

Tilia cordata

  

Japanese rosewood

Torreya nucifera

We know the importance of these trees. As part of our Agro-forestry area, these trees help in many ways in our Sustainable Organic Natural Agriculture activities. They are mixture of medicinal, natural insecticides, fruit and several diversified useful trees.  These trees also help in integrated farming, nutrient cycling, water retention, soil enrichment and benefits animals and crops. Whenever you get a chance plant a tree

and maintain it.

For sure trees will provide benefits.

Do Good Deeds in Life

You don't have to do complex things in life, when you want to do Good.
Simple good deeds or deeds that does not bother others will make you happy.
Some simple deeds I have done:
Maintaining a bird feeder and am very happy to see the wild song birds happily feed on it.
I wake up every morning to their chirping sounds. It is excellent to watch them on this bird feeder.
I have seen they share food among them. I feel better seeing these wonderful birds.

Birds feeding each other at the bird feeder

My wife maintains a wonderful rose garden. She loves to take pictures of these roses. I enjoy both the natural roses in variety of colors and photo of these roses that she takes.It was always better to grow some kind of produce in your area. Flowers, fruits, edible plants and greens and those tastes excellent, if you grow yourself. It is one the happiest things that you can experience.

Beautiful Rose in our garden

Our Produce - Chillies that we grew

 Mint

 Pineapple

Curry Leaves

If you have some knowledge in a field, teach it to someone who is interested in learning them. I have knowledge in Environmental and Information Technology. I teach it to whoever is interested in them. I have taught to individuals and they are excelling in these fields with flying colors. I am proud of them when I see they excel more than me. I feel that happiness when I am teaching, incorporating my knowledge to other people and they excel.

Teach what subject you know very well - to others 

I feel happy whenever I could create a job opportunity for a person. A job is always a first step for a person in his professional ladder. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur and become rich. There are several factors that influences that. But everyone with good effort can get a job, save some money and experience and
if interested one can start their own company.  I always feel happy when I train somebody to get a job. It is always good thing that you can provide a job.

With Farm Workers @ EA Farms

Dairy Farm

 Apiary

  Coconut

Mangoes

                    Respect everyone and you get the same treatment. That will make you more and more cheerful.

I created a project called Sustainable Organic Natural Agriculture - EA Farms - land development which has grown from a small to huge project. In Information Technology I was able to guide developers to develop products such as EA Toxics (USEPA related) and EA Generics (USFDA related).

I envision that to grow more.Hard work and your own projects bring lots and lots of joy. Never give up on your projects and add small effort to it everyday and it will grow with God's grace. If a person like me can do these projects, then think about what a true leader of a country can do for the country.
Wherever you are, please do such things and you will reap good things too.

Peace, focus on Positives and Prayers

Saving couple of birds, I felt I had a lived a worth full life.

So it is very difficult to digest when you read hundreds of people killed by their fellow human beings.
Evil has taken over the minds of these people to do such atrocities.
Even, one celled bacteria has been able to adopt the harshest environment by learning their lessons.
Why can't six sensed human being achieve this learning from the past mistakes.
There are so many worth full deeds one could do (esp. if you are a leader) than killing people.

In the vast universe (How big our universe is?), our milky way is just a speckle,
In the milky way, our solar system is just a tiny spot,
In the solar system, earth is a very very tiny object,
In the earth, your land is very small,
In the land, every individual is a fragile living object (However to bring a normal fragile human being to the Earth, it takes a mother's ultimate sacrifice ).

Even if you have 60 years of life span it is just a twinkle in astronomical numbers.

In that sixty years at least 18 years will go in childhood and education, some years will go as old age. If you consider other factors such as sleep and days with illness, you will have very few worth while days during your life. So instead of fighting with others and think you achieved greatness ( however, in History you will be treated as an useless dirt ), create something useful to others. That way you feel your life ( Similar to Mayfly's life in astronomical numbers) was worth something.

Accumulating wealth and money a midst suffering people, is useless. With the money you possess, help others (your own brethren) to improve and escape from poverty. 

If you can teach and educate them, they would do wonders. So many wonderful things are there to do and achieve, so why do you always think about destroying, that too - your own kind. History says atrocities committing people die in a dreadful way. Learn from the past mistakes and move forward positively.

As a tiny member of Beautiful Little Earth in the Great Universe, I prayed wholeheartedly (on Nov 2010) that there should be no war between South and North Korea. It is now 2013 and until now it did not happen. I pray war should never happen. Leaders and Excellent People (Even comedian like the great Charlie Chaplin - video) have guided us in the right path long before - The GOOD EARTH is RICH and can provide for everyone.

Greed has poisoned souls. We need humanity..

More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness..

I should like to help everyone.
We all want to help one another. 
Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other's happiness, not misery.

We don't want to hate one another. 

If humans work together we can achieve everything.

I felt proud to stand near a wonderful team human made machine that has traveled far out into the unknown space and has comeback.

I always make sure to take my friends and family who visits me to NASA and show the work of great human beings and get the out of world experience. Recently, I had the privilege to accompany my Environmental Science (Masters) Professor Dr. Shanthi Vishwanathan, 

who had come to present a paper in International Conference on Bio defense and Natural Disasters. Hope we can focus on positive things and contribute such positive things to others.You don't  have to complex deeds, just simple good deeds are fine and it will add up. Again praying that no war should occur. 

MRSA, India Trip, Environmental Projects

It has been a while since I updated enviroapps blog.

Trying to help a friend in his damaged house, somehow contracted MRSA bacteria. It was a very bad experience that I had to go through.

MRSA Prevention:
Keep your hands clean by washing thoroughly with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand rub as soon as you come from an outing.
Thanks to immediate attention and prayers, I am back to normal after couple of months.

Also, I traveled to India. I could see the difference in India because of the economic boom.
People driving high end cars, roads are becoming better (Still not that excellent).
These temples were built more than 1000 years ago and look as fresh as a new structure.

Pillayarpatti

 Thanjavur

Since greed has taken over, the structures that has been built at recent past is withering away very easily.

Also, very little is focused on Environment and Pollution. Still Plastics are floating everywhere. Garbage thrown at will and nothing has improved on that issue. All roads should be like this with trees on the sides.

Anamalai Road

Few areas are clean, but doubt that they are pristine.

I heard that it was smelling pesticides before the rains. Thanks to good monsoon, the environment looks clean and not smelling pesticides.
Hopefully they will learn and make these areas pollution free and clean.

EA Farms project is moving forward as we envisioned. Dairy is moving along with several varieties of plants and trees being planted.
Within few years we will reap the benefits of these. I could smell fresh air from the variety of trees we planted there. Again rains have made it green. We are producing pure coconut without any chemicals and extracting very pure coconut oil. Also we are happy to produce milk that is uncontaminated and its pure bye- products. I had the most wonderful tasting butter from our farm. Peanuts that were grown also was very tasty. When I was young student, I had read in Tamil Mariyathai Raman Kadaigal that some one had fine lunch that consisted of thayir (yogurt) and agathi keerai (sesbania grandiflora also know as - august tree leaves or humming bird tree leaves) and it was the best food one could eat. I tried that and always felt that was so true. This time from EA Farms I savored the best yogurt and agathi keerai. Also I had the opportunity to feed agathi keerai to the cattle.

It was great pleasure to meet my professors in PSGCAS Environmental department. Dr. Palanivel and me went for lunch together and discussed various topics. He has started an Environmental lab - Greenlink Analytical and Research Laboratory (India) Private Ltd. 

I had the privilege to visit the lab and felt very happy. In this era of "REAL ESTATE BOOM", it feels better to know that people are still willing to do such endeavors. Thank God I had the opportunity to get guidance from such wonderful personalities.

Another day, we visited my friend Dr. Ravi's Aviculture farm - Wild County farm stay which is in Sethumadai - foothills of Topslip.

Wild County Farm Stay

                                                                 

I strongly recommend to stay at this place and enjoy nature at its best.
Very happy to see wildlife thriving at these areas.

Wild Monkeys

                                       

Nilgiri Tahrs

Overall had one of the best time of my life.

Saving National Parks - Florida Senator Mark Rubio - Good Words

Great Naturalists with the help of wonderful Presidents saved the National Parks with their great efforts.
You realize and thank them when you visit such great National Parks.

I just requested my Florida Senator to save our National parks and got an enterprising, promising and positive reply:


Dear Dr. Karuppiah,

Thank you for contacting me regarding our national parks and the impact they have on our country's businesses, communities and historic identity. I would like to take this opportunity to address your concerns.

As a native Floridian, I understand the importance of parks, and I value their contribution to our state's tourism-oriented economy and ecological diversity. I will continue to monitor ongoing developments, and will remain mindful of your concerns as we address legislation that would impact our national parks system.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. It is an honor and privilege to serve the people of Florida. If I can be of any further help to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.


Sincerely,

Marco Rubio
United States Senator

I Thank our Florida Senator from bottom of my heart for his enthusiastic effort to save National Parks.
For sure, Future Generations will reap the benefits of such savings. In this era of environmental abuse (seen all over the globe), it is good to hear such words from the senator.

Everglades National Park - Map

A scenic view at Everglades National Park

As Environmental Scientists and Naturalists, we will do our part for the future generations:

SAVE TREES

SAVE MOUNTAINS

SAVED ENVIRONMENTS

Makesh Karuppiah, Ph.D
Environmental Scientist

Water Scarcity, Innovative ways to produce potable water and natural Energy Resources

Water scarcity is rising at an alarming rate in certain parts of the world.
Fresh water bodies that depend on rainfall are completely drying due to the fact that climatic conditions are constantly changing and weather patterns are being affected. Deforestation and Construction (River soil removal) have caused so many side effects.
Drought can cause entire Nation to succumb.
Just saw the news that at Tamilnadu (where I come from) there are no rains and water levels are deteriorating at an alarming rate.

Soon people may even have tough time getting potable water.

As an Environmental Scientist, my concern is

What the government and scientists are doing to curb this water deficiency problem?

Tamilnadu has hundreds of universities.

Tamilnadu has thousands of colleges.

These educational institutes have very intelligent students who are guided by intellectual and experienced professors.  Why are these universities not researching on alternate water producing topics and produce water?.

People from Tamilnadu have excelled in variety of fields all over the globe.
However, Tamilnadu still has several hours of power cut and shortage of water.

What I am pointing to is - why are these universities and colleges are not researching on novel and innovative methods of producing water at affordable prices.

Ironically, Tamilnadu has the largest desalination plants in whole South east Asia and they have a long coastal area to utilize.
There are innovative technologies such as

Water from air.

Self water filling bottle.

Efficient Desalination - using Nano Technology.

Future Cheap alternatives for desalination - nanotechology filters.

Also solar, bio, wind and geothermal energy can be used along with wind and hydro generated power.

As an individual and group of people, who wanted to do something for the roots, we sincerely tried to get and implement these technologies. but could not afford to do so. We are still trying though.

Sarcastically,  I can say that  I am sure government can fund these studies with the huge profit they make from TASMAC - Alcohol effects.

What we do is to plant as many trees as we can and save them at our EA FARMS SONA (Sustainable Organic Natural Agricultural) site. Hope these trees helps and brings rain there in the future.

Our area trees:

Also, we are planning to use as much as natural resources at EA Farms.

Nature Festival Birdapalooza Lake Apopka Preserve and Restore Natural Environments

Most of the time you hear nature environments are being destroyed all over world.
Deforestation happen at an alarming rate. Water bodies are heavily polluted.
Air is contaminated with chemicals that are harmful for breathing. In most polluted cities already people are starting to wear masks. You should be thankful if you are living in a clean air environment and drinking good water. Others are not privileged as the people living in good environment. Most of the cities are being converted to concrete jungles.

On the apposite side, as an Environmental scientist, I feel better and take pride when I see an excellently restored area that was once most polluted environment.
Today had the opportunity to visit Lake Apopka environment for a festival called Birdapalooza .

Lake Apopka was one of most Polluted lake in Florida. Hard working people with the help of government had secured the area and made it a wonderful natural habitat. As always, I reinstate that wetlands are very important for any country. Never destroy wetlands.

Good that these lands have been purchased from private owners and had been restored. Several birds and animals live there. Fresh air, greenery and good water are very hard to get these days.
I hope other countries all over globe should have this type conserved areas, so that at least some of those areas in their country gets protected. Otherwise people in those countries would only see buildings without any natural environments, trees and wildlife such as birds and animals. These Environments and their inhabitants  are very important and would not be there for them and their children.
In this industrial era,  it may seem that it cannot be avoided to leave a piece of land like these, but real leaders should save the environment and preserve these type of areas (at least few areas) in their respective countries.
It was a joy to breath fresh air, watch wonderful lake environment and view majestic birds and animals with family and make friendships with people who equally respect Nature and Environment.

Swamp Brothers were there.
Audobon society were there and along with Orange county people, who gave a wonderful Bird Watch Tour around Lake Apopka.
People such as pew environment, who work  towards better environment were there.

Also felt good that so many children actively participated and were very interested in birds, animals and environment.

I am always for CLEAN TO GREEN and for Protecting & Restoring Our Water Resources.

Makesh Karuppiah, Ph.D
Environmental Scientist