Every year farmers lose crops for various reasons. It’s something one reads about while sipping coffee and reading the newspaper, not anything that unduly upsets one’s daily routine. But since we started cardamom cultivation in Wayanad, the fluctuations in crop output brought us to experience this harsh reality first-hand.

 Our initial experience of crop loss happened due to ‘thrips’ – a microscopic sucking pest that scratches the surface of cardamom leaving ugly brown scars. This reduces the market rate by  50% or more. Of course, thrips are controllable if the pesticide is sprayed at a regular frequency. My mistake was in believing that I could use organic methods to control pests. I learnt the hard way that bio-control methods don’t work for all pests, and certainly not for thrips.

 The next year I took precautions against thrips, but this time it was monkeys! It takes roughly one hour for a group of monkeys to completely destroy one acre of cardamom plants. They mainly prefer young healthy shoots, ripping the stems open to get at the juicy tender center portion. Luckily for us, we could save around 50% of our cardamom plants.

 Then COVID struck in 2020 – crashing markets. The market price of cardamom dropped to far below the feasibility level in cardamom farming. On the flip side, however, covid and the subsequent lockdown provided the perfect opportunity for me to devote time to looking after my cardamom babies, and restore them from the ravaging they received from monkeys the previous year!

 If all this reads like gloom and doom, you’re in for no surprises. The season following COVID saw fruit shedding rise to an alarming level. Healthy-looking cardamom fruits dropped before they matured and could be plucked. We lost at least 100kg due to fruit shedding alone! The agri expert whom we consulted said it was due to climate change. Little one can do about that.

 Except pray!

 ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’ – Jeremiah 29.11. Our hope was in this promise.

 So Latha and I prayed and persevered. Soon our cardamom plantation started looking good and was beginning to attract the attention of other farming folk in our charming little village.

 It was 22nd May 2023, two months before harvest, Latha and I were looking at our garden and sipping tea in satisfaction. We had just completed clearing the fallen leaves in the garden and were looking forward to the next day when my brothers, Presley, Conrad and their families were to visit us from Australia. “They are going to love my garden”, I thought out loud. As if on cue,  the sky darkened and the gentle summer breeze suddenly turned into a strong whirlwind. It took just a few minutes for the storm to crash our dreams of a bumper harvest. Huge trees came crashing down all over our garden and onto our cardamom plants.

 Darkness and destruction all around….

 In all 16 trees – jackfruit, mango and areca trees were uprooted across our farm. The damage to cardamom plants was devastating. It was going to take months to clear the damage. We were heartbroken.

 I was shaken and so was my faith. Forget about the bumper crop we had prayed for, we would probably get the lowest harvest in all the 6 years since we started. Latha was more practical and positive. “Let’s pray’’ she said. “God can help us”. So we pulled ourselves together and continued to pray, asking God to help us.

 Cardamom is harvested every 45 days starting in July and going into March. As expected, our  July harvest was very low. However, after the first harvest, I noticed quite a few new pannicles and flowers blooming on the cardamom plants! Then in September, the women who pluck the cardamom made an observation – not only was there more cardamom in our garden but the quality of the fruit in terms of healthiness and size was better than in surrounding cardamom plantations!

The miracle continued for all the subsequent harvests till the season ended in  March this year. The final quantity was indeed a bumper crop for us!

 The miracle didn’t stop there. The market price of cardamom, which has been abysmally low since COVID happened, started rising! When it was sufficient for us, we sold our bumper crop.

 This song by Gloria and Bill Gaither touches our hearts with this message :

 Life is easy, when you’re up on the mountain

 And you’ve got peace of mind, like you’ve never known

 But things change when you’re down in the valley

 Don’t lose faith, for you’re never alone

 For the God on the mountain, is still God in the valley

 When things go wrong, He’ll make them right

 And the God of the good times, is still God in the bad times

  The God of the day is still God in the night.

 PS. Did I mention that this year an elephant strayed into our garden? Well, it did and broke a  few cardamom plants in passing. Smashed my scarecrow too!

 “Let’s pray”, said Latha, “Only God can help us”.

Philip Peter