Agriculture has been a lifeline of economy of a ladakh for the whole century, until ladakh was open to Tourist in 197,
In ladakh, agriculture, mainly includes, barley, wheat, peas and turnip, For decades people have been enjoying a simple meal which includes, soup out of barley, and most of the food in ladakh used to be the by product of out of barley, wheat and Black beans, Be it sumptuous klolag which is byproduct sand fried wheat, be it local beer (chang) which is a fermented barley or pawa (high quality organic protein which is mixed of wheat and black beans in the dried forms.
there is more to add but in the blog we will focus mainly on the, “A day in a life of a Ladakhi farmer”
Due to high variation in the altitude in within the small region of ladakh there is a huge difference in the time of planting and harvesting even though there could be only a 10s of kilometers between each villages but
Generally in leh ladakh Agriculture season mostly started in the late March, Temperature in the month is hover just above the 0 degree and generally little higher in the day. This result in melting of snow which usually accumulated over the months.
the first step of the work as a farmer start with placing local manure on the field, which is a cow dung from the cow shed or from the local toilet which is a compose of toilet recycle and the picture looks like below
the next step is to scatter all the manure over the field and now seeds are thrown too,Farmer usually sow pea or turnip in the late march, Once the harvest of Pea and turnip is completed field are watering and keep it for weeks and plow it using tractor or Traditional method using of yak,
Once the harvesting is completed, it look something like below images, it is keep like that for another week and soon you will notice life coming out of it.
Once everything related to wheat and barley is completed, the next focus as a farmer keep his head toward making a sowing a onions, potato, tomotoes for that we usually made a smaller field yet many in the shape of square for each types of vegetables.
By this time you will a see full grown barely and wheat and and it keep watering the field every 7 to 10 days.
You will see the whole valley turning green with each day and more and more greenery started to cover the dried small valley.
By this time, we are already in the month of April and we notice buds coming out of the apricot trees and by a week, half of the valley looks to be covered in snow again to due the white flower of Apricot blossom and it looks like a cherry blossom too
and there are apricot blossom festival in many villages of ladakh, it is celebrated to welcome the warm and lively spring after a cold and dried period of life.
You will notice that it’s already passed a month of May and you will see the harvest of potatoes.
the farmer will water the field and it goes after once after another
Update: As we are about to enter the month of June, You can start to see more greenery and some wild flower are in full blossom
This wild flower are grown everywhere and you can couple of colour like yellow in the picture and other colour are pink and purple
On the other hand, all fruit grown in ladakh are already in Early stage, Below is the picture of Apricot in its early stages
More update coming soon