After tasting a bit of success in last year‘s paddy & feeling gung-ho about it, this year’s harvest happens to be a real damp squib. The late rains, then when the deluge finally arrived, it became difficult to find people to do the transplanting, loads of weeding jobs, then finally when we finished harvesting the paddy on Nov 16th again the heavens opened & rains came down, which meant a whole lot of it was lost.
Even though i don’t mind certain levels of unpredictability in life, i would prefer a certain predictability in my work. When results from one’s work becomes unpredictable then it is a real blow to one’s confidence. However life & one’s work is also interwoven together & one cannot separate them either. Then negativity creeps in & questions like let me try & find a job starts popping up. One realises at this stage of life there is no job that i am qualified for & the jobs that i might qualify for will require me to slog 12 hours a day to earn 5k. I might as well put in that amount of work on the farm. Again my thoughts drift to next year….. again the same questions come up…… Should we grow paddy or not ? If not, what else ? Hopefully some clarity will come up in the next couple of months.
I lost my father recently (he was 87 years & was suffering for the last 6 months with a heart ailment), so in all this i am away from the farm for long periods of time, which also means that we will not be growing anything this winter either.
The only thing which we achieved without much ado in last 2 months was to build a proper dwelling for my co-workers.
In 2010 when we got this land this was the first dwelling we built. This was built-in a record 15 days. I used to stay here, then Prakash joined me, then his wife (Vimal) joined us by Oct 2010. In 2012 we build a cottage for ourselves, so i moved there. This shack has seen four monsoons. The wall needed constant maintenance, however the flooring was giving way. During the rains there wouldn’t be any dry area to sleep.
Its been in our agenda to build a decent place for our co-workers to stay comfortably. We learned a few lessons from our last two building sagas/ episodes. So for this building project we took our own sweet time. The stones, bricks, sand et al were bought & kept last year. Many masons & contractors came & offered to do the building job. (also loot us in the process by quoting exorbitant rates). Fortunately we had met a very decent contractor here in Pune & one day while discussing with him the above, he offered to come to the land & give us the estimates of the material required & the costs involved in building. That was really nice of him & we had something to fall back on & refer whenever we spoke to any local contractor/mason. In October, when a local contractor came to us we could confidently give him the job.
Without vehicular access to our land we were able to build this house. Each stone, each brick, each granule of sand, each bag of cement was manually carried from across the river which is 300 mtrs from this house !
Naveenn said:
Nice to see a pucca place for your workers, they must be happy! Could you outline costs and time taken for the actual construction please?
arjun said:
@ naveenn : as i said we collected the materials last year before the rains, for the actual construction it was only 3 weeks. The costs of the whole works is 3.5 lacs
mmokashi said:
Please consider writing a book on your experiences. I am sure it would be a success.
arjun said:
mmokashi : not now….may be after 10 years
Satish said:
Sorry to hear about your loss.
I did Finger Millet (Nachani or Ragi) and had similar experience. Lesson learnt: there will always be acute shortage of labor when I need it. So the decision is not to grow rice/nachani from now on. Which unfortunately means I will have to keep the farm idle during rainy season. And I should adapt techniques to reduce the dependence on manual labor for plowing, weeding, etc.
arjun said:
satish : do let me know how you work out cutting down of costs etc
Nandakumar said:
I did paddy in the last season..it was OK, even though yield was not good. Again doing paddy for the second season, it looks slightly better.. but labor cost was too high..especially for weeding..may have to try direct seeded SRI next time, so that transplanting cost , weeding cost and watering cost can be saved.. Arjun – it is a tough game, but we should be able to find a way..let us keep doing it.
Regards,
Nandan
Satish said:
Hi Arjun,
You have already taken two cost cutting measures I had in mind, namely direct seeding and a brush cutter. A small tractor is next on my list for timely preparation of soil.
Regards,
Satish
arjun said:
thanks Nandan for your encouraging words
T.V.N. said:
Hi, just happened to come across your blog while searching for some info on Karvanda, and am amazed by the similarity! We too have just turned to farming and had our first rice harvest this year. It was just about Ok and we trying better ways to reduce costs. We tried Jeevamruth and Panchagavya and are quite pleased with the results. It is much more economical than the standard FYM/Compost if you are buying it. My post on transplant http://ourfarmatchitrapur.blogspot.in/2014/11/rice-transplant.html 🙂
arjun said:
surreal is the similarity T.V.N… a stream to cross to enter the land, two hound companions. Hope to be in touch
T.V.N. said:
Yes indeed, the more I read your blog, the more similarities I find. And loved the pics of your hounds too. Happy Farming!
arjun said:
@ satish : direct seeding failed for me, the brush cutter is not for the rice fields… its meant to cut grass
Satish said:
Sorry to hear about direct seeding. What went wrong?
The brush cutter was for clearing the grass and weeds. Sorry I was not clear in my post. I could have bought the weed cutter in the amount I spent on doing the job manually. Learning….
Kamal said:
What worked for for my paddy was a mix of direct sowing, SRI and a simple weeder which even a child can use.
arjun said:
Well Kamal: its not working for me. This year is going to be my lost shot at trying to grow rice. If i fail then will convert the fields into fish ponds