"I went home last week expecting to find that my wheat crop would almost be ready for harvest," he said. "Instead, this beautiful weather, unheard of in March, had levelled my field of ripe wheat, so I could harvest merely 30 per cent of the crop." In his village, he said, the atmosphere was of doom and gloom. For March is when the rabi crop - wheat, mustard or pulses such as chana and masoor - is ripe for harvest. "Farmers spend the entire season protecting their crop from infestation and drought. By March, there's a sense of relief that one's on the home stretch. This time, too, when I visited in February, the wheat was standing tall," he said. The first wet spell in early March caused the heavy stalks of wheat to bend and fall. "The next spell of heavy rain caused the ripe crop to start rotting. Not just wheat, potato, onion and mustard crops have been similarly affected," he said. "In my village, you should see the faces of the farmers who rely solely on their fields for income. They've lost six months of income thanks to these rains."
Consequently, in his village this year, Babulal says, more and more farmers are going to be looking for other work. "As a small-scale cultivator, one is totally dependent on the vagaries of the weather. Nowadays, with expenses piling up, not many can afford to rely only on farming." he said. Several years ago, when drought destroyed a sizeable chunk of his crop, Babulal decided to hedge his bets with a second job in Delhi. "I realised that the only work a farmer has between sowing and reaping, is irrigating his fields. So, I looked around for work that gave me the flexibility of returning every fortnight to water my fields," he said. Vegetable vending offered this and more, and Babulal has been doing this for the last 10 years. "This way, not only do I have a second income, I also use my time more profitably," he said. Recently, when his aging father needed gall bladder surgery, Babulal had enough savings from his vending business to pay for it. "This won't have been possible, most likely, had I just been a farmer." He said.
It hasn't always been easy-going, he said, for there are fallouts in being a part-time farmer. "Full-time farmers manage to sneak in a quick crop of millets between the rice and wheat crops. I just manage to plant two crops, as I'm never able to fine-tune it that well," he said. But at least he's not dependent solely on the harvest for his livelihood. "And more importantly, although I work in the city, I've managed to retain my roots, which have always been in farming," he said. "That's why, even though I curse this unseasonal weather with my fellow farmers, having a fallback option allows me to enjoy this unseasonal coolness while it lasts."