How To Control Anger

It is crucially important to control anger before it controls you. But life is so fast, things are so complicated and people are so slapdash that controlling anger turns out to be a hard hitting task. You lose out on an argument despite being in the right side, someone wrongly affected your career or just anything like that can leave your anger burst. While doing this is practically reasonable, it earns nothing but health hazards and social problems. There are better ways to control anger without feeling bad about any condition. Here we cover only a few:

When something seems going out of control, do not lose mind. Count 50 slowly or think the person who is putting you up in bad mind has no clothes wearing. Although a little weird, it may help you feel relax.

Have deep breathe, look at the sky and learn to control the situation. Looking at nature like birds, butterflies also help. If nothing is coming of help, just scream out on open place. Make sure to make it louder just from inside.

Make a note on what happened. How to react with the situation. After some days, when you will read the note, you will feel happy about the memories on why and how things grew like this

Pray to god to be with you and control you. A silent prayer from heart will never go blank and the almighty will lead to the correct path Close eyes and learn to mediate, remember the best childhood times, and most importantly think what the person you want to see yourself as? An overly irritating and easily frightened one or a smart, intelligent person who knows not to be angry easily.

All these little stuffs help you become happy without reacting badly on situations. We will cover other ideas in the forthcoming series. Keep coming.

Bees and Beekeeping for Nature and Ecosystem

Bees are one of the most important creatures of nature. They contribute heavily in forming a healthy ecosystem. They are change agents for gardening and farming system due to their pollinating activities. People who think bees are only responsible for giving us honey should learn more about the benefits of bees and beekeeping.

Some of the hands on benefits of beekeeping are discussed in these wonderful articles: 

http://www.varanasiestate.com/beekeeping-101-benefits-of-beekeeping/

What we can achieve by becoming a beekeeper:

http://www.varanasiestate.com/beekeeping-101-about-beekeepers/

However, they are disappearing due to excessive use of pesticides and electromagnetic radiation caused by mobile phone and wireless devices. Varanasi Estate is advocating protection of bees and encouraging people for beekeeping.

Humans are engaged in beekeeping for more than 15000 years. Even our ancestors were aware with the immense benefits offered by bees. But, we are nowadays forgetting bees like several other gifts of nature. We are migrating towards organic sugar and forgetting the original sweetness of natural honey.

So, it's the time when we all should start taking action for protecting bees and encouraging people towards beekeeping. We have to learn about the advantages of bees and beekeeping and also about the disadvantages of not having bees on this earth. May be it will help us being serious for this noble cause.

Let's take action and get another lesson from bees, to stay united for a common cause.

Sustainable Agriculture Video

Sustainable agriculture is all about farming with a focus on core ecology principles. Adopting sustainable agriculture practices helps farmers, end users, animals, and the whole environment. Here is a video illustrating sustainable agriculture in a very simple and effective manner:

For a detailed view about what is sustainable agriculture, have a look at http://www.varanasiestate.com/what-is-sustainable-agriculture

How to Harvest Rainwater and Greywater

You don’t know the value of water until the well is running dry…

Water is a wonderful renewable resource, the value of which we often tend to ignore because of our unlimited access to it. But the picture is certainly not fair everywhere. The adequate amount of water supply is still a dream in many areas of the world where drought and other weather perils are a common trend. When one wastes it because s/he doesn’t know how to store the excess amount, someone else is looking for a lifesaving drop. Much (if not all) water deficiency problems can be addressed by harvesting rainwater. In the ancient times, societies around the world used to have rain barrels to hold the water for future purpose, but the practice had been paused mainly because of our lack of awareness. Fortunately, the growing concerns helped us reconsider the harvesting concept.

Benefits of rainwater harvesting are many. It reduces ground water decline, conserves surface water wastes during the monsoon times, reduces the level of soil erosion, and develops a culture of resource conversation. Besides these, the water can be used for a range of purposes, including watering the plants in your garden. It saves you money and helps you realise a number of benefits. So literally when it rains, it means opportunities are falling from the sky. Learn how to harvest them below:

Where to harvest: The water can be harvested from different areas, depending on the amount of rain and pattern. The options could be as diverse as rooftops, paved/unpaved areas, stormwater drains, water bodies etc.

How to harvest rainwater for gardening: The whole concept of rain water harvesting revolves around three elements:

1. Collection Space 
2. Transportation system 
3. Storage facility

Analyse your collection space. If it is a roof which can rightly channelize the water, try to determine how much water you are required to collect for the gardening. On an average, 25/40 foot roof can shed more than hundreds of gallons of water hourly. The collection of water also depends on the number of barrels, which can be purchased from the garden supply stores. 


The transportation system is based on the roof drain pipe and gutters you install. The pipes should be strong and large enough to transport the water. Use fitters to keep debris, misquotes and other problems away.


The storage facility is the barrels you purchase. You can even build your own (watch our next articles). Consider placing them properly and that they can store sufficient amount of water. To counter the overflowing, you can fix a pipe with them and distribute it to the garden area, where the water would not stay idle.

Greywater is the usual household wastewater that is still unscathed from toilet waste. The sources of greywater could be shower, bathroom wash basins, washing machines etc. This water is different from the toilet wastewater, which is also called black water.

Benefits: It can be used for different purposes. The most common is to water the plants. It improves plant growth, encourages soil fertility, reduces fresh water usage etc.

How to reuse greywater: The simplest form of collecting and reusing greywater is to allocate a bucket in which the water can be preserved for a few hours and then supplied in the garden. Alternatively, a good number of alternative methods are available through which the greywater can be distributed directly to the garden area, but for that you have to follow certain guidelines. Greywater is not benefical for the plants if handled improperly. The water can also be used for other purposes including cleaning.

Greywater irrigation could be unhealthy if you have little space and unsuitable soils. We’ll cover a comprehensive article detailing everything about greywater recycling in an upcoming article. Don’t forget to read the post.

Varanasi Estate Invites Permaculture Farms to Share Their Project Bio

Attention permaculture experts, practitioners, and farm owners! 

Have you shared your experience or project details with Varanasi Estate? 

Spread your words in front of the whole world through our growing community. 

Hurry up!!

Only Four days left of permaculture month at http://www.varanasiestate.com

For more details visit: Our Invitation Post

Permaculture Resources

Permaculture defines resources as the energy or elements in a system. The non-living components can include sun, wind, rain and minerals,  and living components such as people, animals, plants and fungi.

One way of defining the resources we use is to take the “use and result” approach, and look at the consequences when we use these naturally occurring elements.

We view “use and result” in this way;

Those which increase by modest use: Palatable shrubs and grasses which, if managed carefully with techniques such as cell grazing, will continue to increase in yield. If these resources are over or under grazed, they can become either extinct or become tough and loose palatability. Information is also considered in this way: if used well, information will increase, if unused it becomes outdated.

Those unaffected by use: a good view, climate, a pile of stones used for mulch or a heat store and climate. Any well managed ecosystem will be unaffected by its use. Those which disappear or degrade if not used: An unharvested crop, grass which could be cut for hay, swarms of bees, ripe fruit, and water runoff.

Those reduced by use: overharvested fish and game stocks, clay deposits, mature forests, coal and oil.

Those which pollute or destroy if used: residual poisons, radio actives, large areas of bitumen or concrete and sewers running pollutants to the sea.

We can see in many parts of the world where natural systems have been permanently polluted or allowed to degrade beyond the ability to recover- hence famine and war prevail.

Permaculture design seeks to apply an understanding of how natural resources regenerate, so as to repair and restore degraded systems. This is not only for the health of that system in its own right, but for the flow on effects to human culture and activity.


Published at VaranasiEstate (on February 24, 2012) 

How to Start Planning Your Own Transition Town

Transitions Towns do not just spring up over night. They require careful planning and delicate handling if they are ever going to come to fruition. Though it is a lot of hard work, particularly for just one person. Therefore, you will need many hands to help you out, which I guess if the first step to setting up your own transition town.

Rallying together a group of people as like minded and as passionate as yourself is the first step you will need to creating your own transition town. This can be done in a number of ways. You could be one of the lucky ones whose friends just so happen to share your exact point of view as you one everything and will therefore go ahead with anything that you say. But this is a very rare occurrence, so I’m going to assume you are just one person with an idea. If you want to rally people, interact with them. Pound the pavement with a petition, organise events to draw like minded people into your group. This will be an effective, and also fun, way to get people to jump on board with your plan. Another way you could do this is to raise awareness of what a transition town is and why it is that we need them. To do this, create practical and visual examples of what it is that you wish to accomplish, so that those who see it and are interested will become intrigued. For example, displays of solar panels, aquaponic tanks and even worm farms will have people questioning, and those who share your view will become intrigued and voila! You’ve started an entourage.

It is important to make sure that your Transition Town does not simply stop at a talking point. It can’t be one of those topics that comes up every get together with friends around the open fire that never actually goes anywhere. You and the people who are helping you need to remember to remain proactive, proficient and, most importantly, passionate.

It is also important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day; your dream will not come true overnight. You must start small and set the foundations first so that you can build up from there. Setting out to accomplish the impossible will only ensure that the town will fall flat on its face and you’d have to start over again. So set the structural integrity first, make sure that enough people are involved and that you have adequate support from the appropriate organisations.

Well, that’s the simplest way to ensure a successful planning of your transition town. It is essential to make sure that you have enough people who are as enthused as you, that your passion is equal to the task and not just wasted words and that you take each step as it comes, going slow and steady so that no detail is rushed.

Published at VaranasiEstate (on February 24, 2012)