Corporate to Farming Part 3

Why farmers believe in destiny:

I used to make lists of what to do in the farm for hours/days/months like a project and everyday I  will come home wondering what happened  v/s planned ?  Working in corporate gives you higher probability of  predictability than nature. But that won’t work in farming unless you have forefathers who were into farming and have taught you some basic ropes of working in an extremely agile environment.

• You plan to plant some seeds and you realise water/electricity is not there that day, or pump is not working.

• You plan to spray some organic fungicide and you realise there is no shade, it is extremely hot so the spray may not be effective. Or you end up spraying only to have rains wash it all away. 

• The worst is you plan and go to farm thinking I will complete a task and you realise some one has put fire in the next farm which has burnt your side too and drip pipes have melted or plants are gutted.

• You realise it has rained with heavy winds and some plants have been uprooted which has to be taken care of on priority.

• You have planned some actions for the farmhand to help you to execute and realise he is not turning up that day. 

• Or you go to farm for tilling and end up doing something else because the priorities change based on the status of the farm at that day and nothing you plan may work. 

It has good tidings too, for example,

• Sometimes you have an emergency to do some tilling/plumbing work which seems hopelessly out of deadline and suddenly a friend appears to share and complete the job.

• Many times it has happened that some plant would have dried up and given up for good. And in some mysterious way several months later sprouts emerge as soon as it rains. 

• You wanted to make a channel for the water to flow and realise rains have done the job for you much better than you could have done.

• Even now I have one plant that I got from Wayanad, that miraculously comes-up every rainy season and dies in a couple of months. It must be a tuber that saves itself and I have not got the courage to take it out and probably spoil this spectacle as everyone admires it.

So you will realise that any goal you set can happen in ‘n’ number of ways not necessarily your way. If you achieved your goal, It is because it worked as per plan( in spite of how many things can go wrong) /or in some inscrutable mysterious way somethings just fell into place. You are grateful instead of being proud of your planning. You will be humble to nature/god for getting things done rather than pride yourself on the achievement.

Another one of the fallacies was I used to think was with proper planning we can grow things without dependence on Monsoon. Well I say it now, it was such a childish idea with no practicality.

First one, you should have plenty of water in the summer and onwards for that to happen. Normally, the wells dry up( or reduced water flow) in summer and without rains it is deadly for the plants.

Second, everyone needs that breathing time to relax amidst all the hard physical labour. Well, before it starts raining you do most of your preparation and you leave it to god( well Monsoon) to complete the job. Once monsoon starts, it is a relief from the backbreaking work farmers have to do through out from September previous year. I also realised why we have so many festivals starting just one/two month after start of Monsoon.

One day I went to the farm only to see the pump pipe broken, On analysis, the pressure was too high and there were too many bends before connecting to the lateral and there was no relief valve. Since catching a plumber who is willing to come to that place was difficult, I thought of doing with the help of helper. Analysed the bends, removed the filter material and straightened the bend with one valve permanently half open in case the pressure was high. Got an auto starter for the motor and fixed it. It was back breaking and I am thankful for the farm-help. It was simply amazing to see the expression on the his face when it was completed, He mentioned that he thought  I (city guy) will not be able to do it and was helping just for fun. I have to thank all my engineering teachers, friends and colleagues for keeping me hands on. I should say it also increased my confidence and his respect for me. Whether it was using the brush cutter, tiller or using the spray pump. In-fact the best compliment I received was when trying to revive the papaya plant, I was spraying the medicine and the guy next door asked me if I do all this, what will the farm help do.

Desperation and helplessness drives you to try things which you would have not tried in a normal situation. It also gives you confidence to take unknown things and keeps the engineering part of my skills intact.

Example:mixing concrete and fixing poles or making platforms for keeping drums. Making makeshift benches. Trying your own plumbing, electrical work, repairing damaged fences, repairing drip lines etc.,. Not to mention using a small car to carry saplings, cement, tools, Jelly stones and what not.

The outcomes,  

Body pains: Suddenly you realise you have so many muscles and joints. I realised I had  shoulders, back muscles and a spine that strains every time you lift/move a heavy(subjective) stone. Sometimes you work without a break and realise the next day that you have some parts in the body that you did not know existed. You become mindfully aware of your body and its movements.

You become a universal person erasing all racial discrimination reasons. You will possess multicoloured body because of tanning in different areas to different intensities. You can pass off for black, brown or white man depending on which part is being examined.

Learnings 

 I use farm-help(friend) instead of their names because they kept changing over time and for different tasks. They are good friends with lot of knowledge like, when it will rain , what time you should prune the plants, What manure to put for what symptoms, when to cut the fruits, How to ripen raw bananas. ( this one was really good as he said keeping a ripe banana with the unripened bunch will make them ripen faster, later I read that the ethylene released from the ripe banana makes the others to ripen faster). It works on any fruit in-fact. They are extremely resourceful and really understand how to survive in a VUCA world.

The only thing I dislike is their intense liking for Jugaad, they want to make things work then and there but don't bother if it fails later. They are resourceful in using everything at hand to repair and make things work. They laugh when I tell them for more permanent solution. Spending every rupee is a cost they want to avoid. Since they always manage positive cashflow it does not affect them. For me who is only spending, it is  frustrating. They all have their farms and most of them have optimised it for low/no investment, decent returns and freebies from governments.

Another thing I have learnt working in the farm is pacing, working in the farm is like jogging but you have different set of muscles involved and uncommon postures. It is not as natural as running. Initially I was working with the goal and plan in mind and was not very mindful. I found myself extremely productive for 1-2 hours and then so completely exhausted I could not do anymore. I observed from my friends and learnt about doing things slowly, taking breaks so that you can extend the working hours and get more things done. It is a bit counter intuitive but was a great lesson. 

This applies to all things whether you are watching the plants grow, see how the wormicompost gets formed, how long it takes time to fruit etc., they have their own flow and pace. You cant speed it up. Just need to go with the flow and develop patience.

People here have a different nomenclature for tools, medicines, insecticides, plants landmarks. I had to learn them from scratch, Ex.,Govt. manure (For chemical fertiliser) and so on. I will not give many examples as they are in Kannada. When I was trying to understand and make a mapping of my naming knowledge to theirs, They had the expression of talking to an idiot(which may be true) and they made no bones about vocalising their thoughts on my lack of intelligence and knowledge. In-fact my vocabulary of kannada words has increased because of this,  I need to chose words depending on with whom I want to communicate.

I admire their rustic intelligence which is different from corporate habits. 

There is a saying in Kannada “ if you are watching one thing in the jungle, 100 Pairs are watching you “. It is similar here, they somehow seem to know when you come, when you go, who was with you, what did you do ?etc., etc., Although you don’t see anyone watching you so closely. The information just builds up by piecing together different things people have seen. The network they have works faster than anything I have seen. I need to cross the village on the way and my friend calls up to give the update he is late or won’t be coming, it is a different matter that he lives in a different village. I bring some saplings and someone on the road will ask me where I got it and what is the cost for it. May be AI is built on this kind of aggregation.

They say less and observe a lot. Always suggest their ideas as a solution (win win)to your problem. For example you are struggling with weeds, they ask to let their cattle graze. They can save on cattle feed. In case you say no, they suggest to buy cattle (costlier solution and potential job generator) and they offer to take care of it. Then they suggest that there is a milk diary which takes the milk and they can help you with that. If they want to use your spare pipes/ firewood they mention you need to keep your farm clean and if you want, he can take the pipes/firewood away. It is very difficult to say no to such good suggestions unless you are very clear about your reasons.

They never put forward their ideas till you are exhausted of ideas and are more open to listen. They do that especially with urban people as they find us extremely short on listening skills. When you say something be sure it is all being recorded and understood in entirety, not just what you are saying. Someday it could be used as a weapon/shield against you. They probe and question to find out the real you. They will test before trusting you.

What I have realised off late is that farming is like setting up a complete ecosystem. You can’t just expect to grow without the ecosystem of soil regeneration, water conservation and animal husbandry.

I will start somewhere, you will need to regenerate the soil, for that,  you can go the organic or inorganic way. Inorganic seems to be easier initially, but harmful in the long run. Organic is slow and steady takes 2-4 years depending on the soil condition to build up good soil content. The easiest way to improve soil content is mulching weeds which anyway grows and improves soil content. But you cant be just doing de-weeding to improve the soil for 3-4 years so you plant some crops.

To control the weeds and not really damage your crops,  you will need tiller or tractor depending on what is the size of the farm and that will help you control and use weeds for mulching. The more you cut the weeds the more they grow. So you have to protect the plants that you have planted. Weeds grow at a rate 10x times the speed of a useful plant ( A rough guess). In the meantime, you will need manure to enrich the soil the most often used is cow-dung or wormicompost. So you either spend yearly on the manure or have a couple of cows to provide some manure as well as control the weeds. Then cows need shelter and care. Then you need birds /bees/butterflies to pollinate and to control insects.It is better to have fruit plants and others as in my case. The birds help control pests on the long run. Some have flower plants to attract bees as well. I am trying it now.

You have to have a good cover on the land to avoid water evaporation so there has to be good tree canopy cover especially in hot dry district like mine. To enable this cover you need to have good water source. All this to explain that you may end up buying tools, tiller/tractor, brushcutter , sprayer pump and other accessories to de-weed, rotate soil and make plant beds.  wormicompost tubs, bee boxes, cows (if you are more adventurous) and various traps to trap the insects. 

First year I planted 1/3rd of the area with Coconut, Butterfruit, Chikoo, Guava and Lemon, in a grid pattern and papaya in a desert area( it is called Kharab in legal terms. It had lot of stones and quite dry soil, even weeds were not growing except thorny bush). 

It is a big thing to plant coconut saplings and also for me to start this new journey. Me being an experienced project manager, I had organised to have all the people who helped me achieve this milestone to come and plant a sapling. In my own wisdom and convenience, I had planned for the planting ceremony to be on Saturday. ( the day most of them will be free). When I told the workers who were planned to assist in this mega function, They were sceptical and unhappy. The reason was planting coconut is like inviting Lakshmi ( Goddess of wealth) and it cannot be done on Saturday. So had to plan a Friday welcoming of Lakshmi from the Lakshmi of my life( my wife).I had planned the plants to come after the drip lines are laid. As fate would have it, the drip fellow disappeared but plants arrived on time. We had to plant them instead of losing them. Rains as you know are sporadic and random at best. So started the game of buying pipes, drums and buckets to water the plants during the absence of rains. It seems simple when there are a lot of people planting close to 200 plants. It is another matter when two people start to water all the 200 plants manually so that they don’t die. You work at a frantic pace till afternoon( power comes for 4 hours) and then realise that you have watered hardly 30 odd nearby plants. That is when frustration, helplessness and anger builds. We had to maintain the plants for 2 weeks before the lines were laid and relief was visible. Once the pipes are laid, then started the task of making sure the tiny micro-tube was dispensing water and not clogged for some reason or the other ( mud entering, ants closing the opening or silt from the borewell or simply airlock). You have to be there when electricity comes to make sure the water goes to the most needy section (Valve control) and then inspecting the tubes.  Within a week I discovered all the lateral pipes developing holes where there was none intended. The leak led to lot of weed growth and pressure loss. One day I spied peacocks pecking at the pipes. It may be because they suspect it to be snake or some such reptile within the weeds. Then plugging the leaks started rigorously every week. 

It is like starting a new company, you can register and start, but making money is another. Planting saplings is one thing and waiting for them to take root and grow is another. Time again plays the devil, every day you observe, If anyone of them is weaker or greener and nothing seems to change. Especially as it is your first project and you are very observant and careful, you are also aware of the next set of advice that will come from the hawk-eyed friends. Day after day you watch, you start losing patience and in a mood of not caring what happens and ready to accept failure. Then some wilt under the sun/hardsoil and some start sprouting. Withering away saplings need care and that takes over your attention, often neglecting the sprouting ones. I remember all the plants that had a troubled childhood more than the ones that made it without noise. Kind of like rearing children.

One day I came across a big snail looking all nice and good. Being the good hearted samaritan, I put it into the wet soil and it happily burrowed in. I had a taken a photograph of the snail posted it in the facebook to realise it is one of the most destructive one and need to be killed. Hmm., in the beginning, I had not reached that level of hatred yet, Even scorpion, snakes and spider belonging to the tarantula family were safely escorted to good crevices etc.,. Rabbits which were happily gnawing at the roots of papaya were looked at with amusement, but there was no hatred. I intentionally left fruits so that birds can feed and migrate to my farm. I did not mind a couple of guava fruits being insect infested and I let it rot in the tree. Talk about small mistakes coming back to haunt you. They came back with a vengeance and changed a good hearted person to a serial killer.

To add to this, the organic manure I knew of was cow-dung manure/sheep manure or wormicompost. On the advice of friends I ordered cow-dung manure. ( If someone tells you ones shit is another's gold, believe it).  What nobody told or I did not dig enough (literally) was that it has to be treated before applying to the plants. As this contains eggs of grubs… Well the manure fed the plants but also killed the plants as grubs ate the roots. Education such as this is slow since it is practical. I realised this after putting the manure twice. In the rainy season the snails and grubs were having a field day(or season) eating everything in sight and multiplying. 

In any Organisation,

There will be some who are really fast energetic learn and have a lot of turnover,  papayas were more like that, Came up fast some died early and those came up fruited and disappeared equally fast. 

There will be some real hardcore workers who want to learn the basics and build a strong foundation. They seem slow, but are really working hard to strengthen their competence and skills. Coconut saplings were like that they did not grow, neither die, but hard at work beneath the surface growing roots among rocks and stones.

There will be some who are quick and excellent to connect and make things work and are flashy . Guavas starting fruiting in 6 months and were also the ones hit most by insects and birds.

Then there are some who are there as numbers but do not seem to contribute initially. Well Avocado ( Butterfruit)  and Chikoo plants were more like that. Green and growing but nothing to show.

Then some entitled delicate darlings who struggle to survive, they need positive appreciation and encouragement.  Most leave but some stick on trying to make it work. Lemon /citrus plants tried their best to just survive.

The issue of insects attacking lime trees and papaya plants. Papayas were only 40% successful and the remaining ones were planted again. Then it was quite fine till they were attacked by some kind of locusts. The leaves and the top was full of insects. Luckily a very basic neem spray regularly seemed to help. Imagine you goto farm every day and you find a new problem every single day to solve. I love to solve problems but this was another level of problem creation. They seem to multiply exponentially with the previous maintenance as a backlog.

No amount of care was enough for citrus plants. It was like taking care of pampered, entitled children. They would come up with a sprout and immediately the leaves will be eaten by moths. I sprayed neem( probably the only organic insecticide known by me) but within a few days they will be back. Some plants died a tragic death unable to manage the onslaught of moths. Those that survived were like children from famine just having some green leaves. Then came the strange indication, they will sprout green leaves and suddenly become dry. On research, grubs and root borer seemed to be the problem. I tried COC, Baviston ( chemical insecticides). Finally spraying and root treatment of Metarhizium, Trichoderma, Psuedomonas, and bacillus helped, but it took close to 2 years for the plants to really start asserting their right to live without external support.

By year one, I was equipped with brush-cutter, a small tiller, sprayer and various tools for digging and moving soil. Then started the downpour of things to maintain the above. All of the above need maintenance and soon I had nails of various sizes, Screws, Nuts ,bolts, Woo

dstock for the tools, grease, spanners, wrench, screwdriver etc., and soon enough, it overflowed into PVC gum, pipes of various sizes, various tapes, Elbows and other connectors. Not to mention fertilisers, plant supplements, insecticides, fungicides etc.,My tiny shed

of 5x10 ft was overflowing with things. These invited rats who in turn attracted snakes. My farmhouse also started getting affected by the rats and snakeskins ( I have not seen snakes in the house yet). 

I had by the year end one person (Ananda) who was regularly coming to help me ( working 2-3 days a week depending on his availability). He also started adding to the list of things to keep, his clothes shoes, protective eyeglass etc., 

Once we came to the farm after a few days. It was summer days and we had turned on the water valve to water the most needy. We came and he discovered his clothes were missing, I went on to wear my farm shoes and realised one shoe was missing. We suspected thieves but rest of the items like pipes etc which were outside was there. What will a thief do with one shoe ?. On searching we found his clothes-some torn, on the southeast corner and my shoe nearby. On inspection I found something had tried to bite the sole of the shoe. On deeper inspection we found some scat with hair in them and paw-print of something much bigger than a normal cat near the wet area in-front of the farmhouse. We deduced that leopard had come to our farm and not finding anything worth to eat, had secreted his/her waste and showed the anger on my shoes and his clothes. There were some rabbits, peacocks in the farm, may be that was the attraction. Needless to say for sometime we made sure we came together to the farm and avoided being alone.

Selling the produce was a different experience all-together. Papaya was the first one to fruit and soon the tree was full of fruits. It gives great pleasure and satisfaction to be able to hold first papaya you pluck. I was not prepared for that kind of an outpour. In my enthusiasm, I had planted about 40 plants which was too less for mass procurement and too much for personal consumption. First, I started out by bringing them home and distributing to friends and relatives. Then the volumes kept increasing, we had all foods that can be prepared using papaya raw or ripe but we were unable to consume the inflow. That is the time we thought of selling. The first problem was finding the buyer, Most of them charged less than half the retail price ( In fact it was brutal to see the shopkeeper buying from me at x rs and selling it at 2.5x rs at the same place).  I even kept some at the temple for the needy to take home. We  thought of selling on the footpath at half the price but did not have the time nor the inclination. Our whatsap selling plan fell through within a week as everyone showed interest but few came. Our lone success story was selling at an apartment(with the help of a friend) where we were able to sell some papayas. In order for the buyer to take the transportation we need to grow the produce in tons. My 20 kg harvest did not interest them. Just goes to show the trouble farmers have especially if they have small lands. The money I made did not even support the transportation cost of the fruits from the farm to the selling place.

Next came Guavas which was slightly better priced and had a similar experience as papaya. One thing to remember. We need to plant the same kind of fruits in small farms to make decent volume of produce which will make sense to optimise transportation, sell and make some profit.  But the organic way calls for different types of plants to be planted and not one type. Then you need to have substantial land( In my opinion, more than 4 acres) to justify diverse plants and enough yield for the buyer to be attracted.

2nd year

Encouraged by by first year experience, I ventured out with plantain and Areca in the 1/3  portion which was again Kharab. The process of removing stones (as much as possible and digging holes ( Tilling was not effective due to rocks underground but now I did not want to spend so much to clear the place ). Plantain was the support for Areca plants given the dry and sunny weather we experience. It was an interesting study when the horticulturist explained that Plantains store water and if planted near those that need lot of water can support in draught conditions which is basically the entire duration of September to May. This brought in new requirements as the tiller I had was failing to work in the hard soil. So had to buy a bigger tiller. Then to accommodate this and growing tool set had to build another shed. 

This year armed with the experience of the previous year struggling with saplings. I took to improving the soil condition and analysing how to improve the growth of the plants and protect it from insects and other diseases. I was apalled by the amount of snails and grubs we saw once rains started. They were everywhere, snails were on the trees, plants and on the walls of the shed/home. Every time, I cleared the weeds I would see eggs of snails. One year of compassion to snails was proving to be bad. After checking with my horticulturist friend, I started buying snail kill and putting it all over the farm. Brought litres of metarhizium to protect the plants against grubs. Since I was a bit more educated ( or so I think) built two Wormicompost tubs to help in producing wormicompost. You need to have a lot of organic waste to create wormicompost, since I had planted quite a number of Moringa( Nugge), Sesbania grandiflora (Agase) and Glyricidia there was no dearth of green waste. The weeds and dried leaves from the plants made for the rest.

The insects that attacked Guava the second year which were left untreated made  a comeback in the thirdyear with hardly a fruit free from insects or fungal attack. I had to collect the burn the rotten guavas but there were so many. I am still grappling with this issue.

The growth of fruit plants was survival at best. So I took the soil for testing ( If you want to buy the land, I suggest soil testing before deciding to buy). The test results were apalling, when I explained to the the person who tested the soil, what I am growing. He just commented that I was lucky, it has grown this much. He suggested to improve the acidity(PH) of the soil and improve nitrogen, carbon, potassium content which is basically everything a plant needs.  So started the adventure of improving the soil content on a war footing. I ordered a lot of wormicompost close to 4 tons and spread it evenly on the land. You will be surprised that 4 tons of wormicompost on a 1 hectare plot is hardly anything. You can see a dent in your pocket but hardly see any manure in the farm. Then I bought sulpher pellets to spread all over the farm to improve acidity. ( My wormi-compost tubs are still not yielding for your information). Brought some organic manure with lot of nitrogen fixing bacteria and provided it to the plant nodes. It was overall a costly maintenance and improvement program running over a year and continues.

Its funny seeing these plants grow. 

One,I had all these fruit and citrus plants showing hardly any progress for a year and in the second year  I planted Moringa, Sesbania and Glyricidia to generate green waste and improve soil quality. They grew fast and furious into trees in no time. We had to be merciless in pruning it often.

It involved also growing nitrogen fixing leguminous plants. These leguminous plants grow so fast with less water they were in-fact faster than Parthenium ( the perennial pain), which was a shock to me. It actually prevented weeds from growing, but I had the problem of cleaning these plants which looked to be covering the whole place. I could not see more than 1 foot once inside as it grew so dense. Twice I grew them to good results as the soil got better and the plants I have planted also seem to grow better.

Third year I took the step further trying to add more Areca, plantains,Pomegranate and Cashew.( the latter two are supposed to grow well in dry stony and hot climate. I am still struggling with Cashew plants as they seem to be in survival mode like citrus. Pomegranate is already fruiting. The rest are long term wait and watch plants.

Now into fourth year ( the year starts from june/july for me) adding some mangoes and a couple of Apple plants to the list of fruits. Now on(hopefully) , it is all about maintenance and continuous learning.

Farming is a direct lesson on Bhagavadgeeta, where Krishna says “ Just do what is right and leave the results to me “. Through all this experimentation and learning, there was no time to expect anything from the farm. It was more of making sure that I survive in farming.

Not all is lost, Now I can see some coconut trees flowering, Chikoo and Avocadoes fruiting and plantains have increased the green cover. Was able to recover part of my transport cost with Banana sales last year.

When I sit alone on the bench I have made in the farm on a sunny afternoon,  reminsce about the last 3 years. I remember how it was and how it is now. How I struggled to find a shade to sit then, now I have a green cover. I feel happy and pleased that I have contributed to the green earth initiative in someway however minuscule ,and in the process, have learned mindfulness and earned a retreat for peace. On this Guru Purnima day " Sri Gurubhyo Namaha" to all the Teachers in my life.