Corporate to farming -2

Welcome to the second part of the journey from corporate to Agriculture.

Once the documents are checked,

There is a whole lot of legalities to be taken care before signing the deal. You have to see the approach road, the neighbours ( if you can) and finally the  survey of the land and the measurements . These were kind of mountains which fortunately for me were lifted by friends who managed this quite effortlessly ( at least for me).

Survey is an interesting piece of activity, Finding our piece of land which is a minuscule part of the overall land bank where most of the land is not divided was as challenging as finding a needle in the haystack. We call all the neighbours and start measuring without ruffling anyones feelings. It is a very sensitive task for the surveyor as well as all the members concerned. Since I have heard that fights flare up quite instantaneously disproportionate to the dimension of contention. The boundaries are hazy and coming from an engineering company where they talk about nanometers of precision to something that is as hazy as this was a shock of sorts. Luckily things went smooth and we were able to peg the boundaries in a good way. 

If you think that is the end, Registration was a treat to watch.  We had about 25 persons from the seller side coming for registration and 4 of us . It was kind of fascinating to watch the whole family tree coming for the registration as all the stakeholders have to sign ( confirming awareness of the deal and forfeit their rights over the said property) . We also had children. It was like a festival in the registration office. We came at 09.30 AM and started the process at 10.00. It was interesting to watch the enthusiasm and joy of the family that sold the land to us. The matriarch and the women folk were dressed as if for a big function and men in smart casuals. We spent time watching the children clamouring around for treats and everyone crowding the office. There were other registrations too planned for that day.

The process started at 10.00 AM and we got the signed copies of sale-deed by 5.30 pm. We were all exhausted and tired. I  just wanted to return to the familiar time bound routines. It seems so trivial as I write this, but the tension and agony that you go through waiting for things to happen! We could not take a break, Worried that our turn will be over and it will delay things. I hear things have Improved, but coming from a corporate world where time and predictability is sacrosanct and facing this way working. This takes some getting used to and tests your decision.  Time seems to go slow with no predictability. Come to think of it,  As you go fast, time slows down as per physics  but here you realise time is eternal and the 24 hour time we talk about is a mental construct of humans for their own benefit which can be fast or slow depending on the state of mind and not speed. The time from 3.00 - 5.00 pm when I waited for the final registered sale-deed seemed like a million years.

The first feeling once I  register and come out is that strange sensation of anticipation and anxiety. Well I had been wanting to do this and been fighting with a lot of naysayers and finally the opportunity presents and I am worried. It is very surprising how mind works, you crave for something all your life and when it comes you seem to have anxiety to leave the predictable and do something new. For me it was like bungy jumping with Agarophobia. I kept going to the farm( I call it farm though there was nothing except 5 trees and lot of thorny bush and stones) with little work and a lot of planning and slowly the trepidation vanishes and euphoria sets in.

There is a very serene feeling in knowing that you are standing on a piece of land that you can grow what you want. I could see there is a lot of work to do, but the joy of starting from clean slate is a great feeling.

Switching from one profession to another totally different after 30+ years, needs some-kind of unlearning and becoming a fresh slate so a new story can be written. This was unnerving for me, but I had the advantage of de-risking financially. Had the advantage of being the risk-taker always and friends support and push, helped to start with a blank sheet.  The biggest challenge was letting go of what I  was known for, studied for, passionately built up over the years as a profession. You should be ready to give up your ego of being someone to start as a student again. I stopped saying what I was previously when introducing myself. It has a curious effect, it shows how much you loved your job and how devoted you were. There were hardly any thing to introduce except as an engineer which is a bit sad. Luckily my other persuits of running, trekking biking came  in handy though people thought I was kind of a spoilt rich person. 

The least you know / or more you know about the new profession, the worse the challenge seems to be. You need to be a bit foolhardy to to take such a decision. On a lighter note, my experience has been half-baked knowledge ( or no knowledge as I understood later). 

Another big factor is support from family to pursue your dreams which may look foolish and /or stupid to them. If your family shares the same passion then it is great, If they are ready to be with  you so you can realise your dreams then good( as in my case) else you are treading in muddy slopes not knowing whether you will comeback to the starting point or go down to depths where you do not want to start.

There are good teachers, bad teachers and some preachers in the any profession. You being a good listener is a deciding factor whether you will succeed or not. I took everyones advice irrespective of whether they knew agriculture or not and did what I wanted to do. This way I made sure I own all the mistakes and errors that were about to happen as well as the pain and pleasure of doing them myself,

I started this kind of a venture at a later stage in my life. Maintaining the same ratio of  passion over practicality is a bit tough. One thing I realised is as energy level drops the risk taking takes backseat, slow pace of learning leads to hopelessness. You need to overcome this inertia with Immense self motivation and commitment.  

I resigned from my job once the basic things like fence and water source were setup to focus on farming. Well there were other factors too to resign but this was one major reason.When I tried to explain it to people in my office they were skeptical. 

1. About the reason to pursue farming as a hobby..

2. About my sanity, as the present job seemed to be quite good and well recognised. Why couldn’t I just enjoy the fruits of labour built over decades.

3. My Europeans colleagues were more understanding  about following my passion.

4. There were even some practical suggestions to “milk the fruits of labour from the organisation” and then leave,  

I stood by my decision and quit to start this new adventure with complete misunderstanding of what I was doing and immense confidence in my ability to commit and learn.

Apparently, there seem to be a lot of people in India who have this dream (now I understand more and more people have this idea of getting into farming, away from the concrete jungle). I heard a lot of them comment, “  I am living their dream when I tell them what I do.”

Getting work done :

You have this great ego of organising and managing big teams and organisations and think you will do the same here. How hard can it be , you need some planning , investment and then workers to do the heavy lifting, Simple right ?.  Well not so simple.

Corporates we hear about being agile , things are extremely agile when it comes to farming. you have to think on your toes and rebalance all the time. 

Started fencing and realised the workers came with no ropes/ tools, They will wait till the requisites are arranged very calmly.  Once that is done, they try digging and ask for auger machines/ excavators for drilling holes. Then I realised they need to be sponsored for coffee/tea/lunch. If they have to work little extra,  “packet money” needs to be given. ( packet is intentional as this is the money you give to buy the liquor that is served in packets). Other than this, they will have a resting time of close to 1 hour after lunch. This is a standard understanding. For me who was used to getting fixed salary every month and working with deadlines in mind,  this was new. All work is specialised now, the one digging is different from the one lifting the soil to the one moving the pillars to the one putting the fencing. Everyday one or the other will be missing as this is all work on a daily basis by the contractor and you have to plan for alternates with the remaining ones else they will wait calmly for your orders and collect the daily wages.

Advice if you want : You may agree for x amount of money but need to plan for x+lunch+coffee+packet etc., and have alternate plan for each specialist missing the day it is most important.

I was still coming from BLR to Mysore to check the work and it was frustrating that you are promised something but gets done in its own sweet time, usually when you are not there to check the final work and sign-off but your money would have transferred hands. This is like remote working in corporates.

Planning in agriculture is like gambling, You may start with the end in mind as Stephen Covey said.. ., You will soon realise the end itself moves. You also realise your plans may give unexpected good results or unexpected bad results. The mistakes comeback to you every single time you plan to commence the next steps. There are no dearth of people advising on how it should have been done retrospectively. Reversing that decision is like sending the child back to the womb. 

Example:  You put borewell and then plant the saplings, then 2 years later there is less water in the borewell and the next water point is where you have planted the saplings which are kind of your children now. Either you have to sacrifice them or make do with what you have. 

But one thing has to be said, the feeling you get when the borewell digging stops sending dust and sends water up, it is simply divine. It is as if the heavens have approved my intentions. Any farm water source is the first action.

Then came the stones curse from the Gods ?. The land was full of stones, some collected over years and a lot coming up when we dig. So the work with the excavator was started. One day I was struck with the magnitude of the stones that had to be transported. Luckily I had the fortune of finding trucks which were waiting to move the debris from nearby farm but did not have the excavator and I had the excavator. So discussed with the truck guys to transport the stones. They charged a fee for the transport and 5 trucks were doing this in sequence and the whole job of moving the stored stones took close to 21 trucks and a day of work. I was happy that I managed to rid the farm of so many stones in one go. Satisfied at my quick decision and progress that day. Then I realised that usually trucks  pay for the load as they charge money from the company which wants debris to fill the landfill. 

Sometimes I feel agriculture is like e-commerce startups, The progress is measured by the cash-burn and not by the revenue or profits.

Due to unexpected cashflow issues,  I planned to do the development in steps. 

There are some nuggets of wisdom while assigning jobs in the farm.

First : They always work with positive cashflow. You have to show the trust by giving money first. They will not do anything without advance. They will always work from the position of nothing to lose. You can give additional lunch/tea/coffee /drinks or anything else. They will not be under any obligation to you.

Second : Time is stretchable and depending on who is priority, task is serviced. Since you are the one waiting after paying, the onus is on you to call/meet/beg for the work to be done. There are always non controllable factors at work for delaying your job. Commitment is not about the time, only that the task will be complete.

Every job you want to do is unpredictable, whether something as simple as getting the tractor to the farm for tilling  or getting saplings. You have to plan in advance and keep checking the status about the above from each different vendor else you may end up with one or all of them not turning up.

I know I sound a bit pessimistic /fatalist but that is how you feel after living in a world where one is respected and sometimes trained to keep one’s word and commitment . Well there are exceptions everywhere. Here it is the rule rather than exception.

Can I get another one to do the job. Well, first one should be ready to lose the advance and there is a  slim chance you will get someone else. In a small village nobody wants to be the bad guy by taking the job of someone else. In a village it is the fastest gigabit network available. Elon Musk’s starlink  would struggle against it.  Everyone knows what is happening in your world and are waiting to see how the drama unfolds. 

 Probably there is only one vendor for what I wanted nearby. So you are stuck in a “nogo” - “cant go” situation. You follow up repeatedly and when there is no other work pending for him he takes the call and promises to do it tomorrow . I am now trained to be philosophical about time. Tomorrow can be as long as 1 month in my time or more. This eternal follow up culture cultivated in corporate works here in a different way. In corporate it is more of “ you committed so you should have done it “ and most of the time there will be some excuse but guilt will be there. In here, there is no guilt feeling, only the uncontrollable as the reason for the delay the only commitment is to complete the job.

I don’t mean to disrespect the priority ordering of their activities, It  is a bit different from what we are used to in the corporate world. In the office you are there at the designated time and do the job and go back at a designated time ( well some people) . Here they have functions , festivals and passing away of someone and innumerable adhoc jobs which pop up.  Makes it very difficult for them to stick to the daily ritual and respect the commitments on time. Which in turn leads to my next section.

See you in part 3.