How am I going to sustain ?

Pipes loaded for re-threading work

It is meaningless and appearing as futile effort sometimes to think about what I am doing in the farm.  More than half of the crops shown in the previous post is going to vanish in few weeks.  Some are already dead and Subbu donot want to report that to me. I can guess. Symptoms of severe water scarcity has already started.

Last week I fell ill due to Virus and could not even have energy to type an SMS due to weakness. Virus fever last 7 days and there is no medicine. Doctor gave few medicines including one antibiotic, but they are nothing to do with curing. Today I am back. World has not changed in 1 week.

Pipe cut and mended properly.
Look at the mud choke

Subbu has already started sounding about water scarcity. It has completely occupied his mind, soul and body. I knew this would come, but did not expect this soon.  According to him entire neighborhood have gone dry. Crops almost ready for harvest are destroyed due to lack of essential water. Farmers who depend only on rain or pond water have no chance.  I asked Subbu to try and help others where possible. I guess he is already doing that. Sometimes he says Generator was running full night. That is good. Hope he takes fuel cost.

In our farm, i thought everything will be alright as we have now multiple energy sources as backup. No my assumption is wrong.  Water is being pumped through generator which gulps diesel. It consumes 1 ltr per hour. There is deficiency in watering and backlog is piling up every day. Borewell is not having enough output. You start sacrificing one by one as water level decreases.

My dream of vegetable growing and vending is slipping away......

Water flowing in channel.

Meanwhile Subbu himself decided (and I always insisted) that the windpump be fixed again to help. Currently that guy is happily rotating without any load.  He had kept this activity postponed due to over confidence on relying over Diseal power and electricity.  Plus this also requires some money spent and labor mobilized.  Both electricity motor and diesel genset have screwed up untill now.  Though genset is working, it is eating away into precious cost and efforts to keep the machine running. Subbu has to shuttle with petrol-can  every now and then on a bike to fetch fuel from 10 Km away.

So wind energy is back. Good old energy source which I always trust and wanted to keep running.  I wanted this to be kept in top shape, because I have distant plans of making this model site for others to see. I may also get into this business sometime in coming years.

Such a watering method will consume more
water. But they believe in this as it is easy to make and
shape furrows in cheap,
traditional way.

The borewell pipes of windpump and the connecting rods that had earlier rusted are now neatly cut on both ends and re-threaded in nearby lathe machine. Budget 6K.  Hope this will be fixed and windpump will start pumping its nominal water to help overcome the summer.

Meanwhile I asked him to weld the sprinkler on a stand and experiment with it. I want moisture above soil. Currently Subbu has resorted to flow water in channels in traditional way wasting a lot of it.  Villagers just don;t change ways.

Now purchasing a lot of laterals for drip would be costly. I donot want to keep spending money on crops that would never yield. Instead I wanted Subbu to weld the sprinkler on tripod and move it, use it where necessary.