The new month started on a sad note for myself and a co-farm investor who had been my closest partner ever since we started the commercial farm venture this year.
We went for our soy bean harvest yesterday only to come back home empty. You know what it feels like after you have done all the stress and labor of planting with absolutely nothing to harvest. The story went from a complete expectation to reap what was able to produce of our soy beans to being unable to take even a single seed home.
Harvest was delayed, and nature destroyed what we were meant to have as harvest. Remember our corn harvest in the month of August? While we were at that, our soy beans here were ready for harvest at the time. We have to take all of these tasks one at a time.
The corn harvest was completed, and we have other business of bringing them home, shelling, and storage. That too is another time-consuming and labor-intensive activity. Upon completion of all that, I got sick and didn’t have much of an energy to resume back to soy bean harvest almost immediately.
By the time I got better health-wise and we could have attempted visiting the farm, my other co-worker was busy with his exams, and harvest was delayed for one whole month. The already dried grains started getting wet again as soon as the rains became heavier in the month of September.
There was continuous downpour in the month of September until our soybean seeds turned from this, you see here.
To the next picture you see here
Everything got rotten. An estimation of soybeans worth about 50–150 kg got destroyed completely.
We weren’t aware of the situation until this was what met ours when we went with full expectation of harvest yesterday.
I feel really sad at this loss. It was my first time of growing soya beans, and I had nursed this joy and expected this day so badly. Expecting to harvest some grains here and prepare all the soybean delicacies I have had in mind.
Moreover, we also wasted fuel to travel all the way to the farm and being back nothing. Our schedules have been really crazy, such that even when this was ready for harvest, we didn’t pluck them on time, and this had to happen.
Nature has dealt with us in different ways, from an unfortunate drought incident that hindered the proper growth of our crops to a consistent heavy daily downpour that destroyed our harvest. The delay in harvest caused by our other activities and my ill health led to us taking nothing home from this.
Well, I still haven’t recovered from this loss and don’t even know what to say anymore. The same way a farmer feels happy about a bountiful harvest is the same way he can go sad when things like this happen.
All the finances poured into growing this has gone down the drain. I remember how much we spent purchasing seeds, cost of planting, weeding, the labor and work we did here among others, it is unfortunate that even though we could have harvested something, we took home nothing in the end.
This is where and how my first ever experience and journey of growing soy beans ends.
