Come April-May, the Big Tank here wears a green cover. After exhausting the tank water for irrigating paddy crop, farmers virtually ‘invade’ the tank to cultivate cucumber, bitter gourd and sesame.
A sea of greenery covers the tank bed for a nearly 10-km-long stretch from Thoruvalur to Karungulam, and farmers and vendors thronged the tank every morning to harvest tender cucumber and small bitter gourd.
Soon after harvesting paddy crop in January-February, the farmers moved to the tank to sow seeds of widely cultivated gourd family plants, taking advantage of the wet earth condition.
Every farmer has a demarcated piece of land inside the tank, and all the farmers were engaged in the cultivation for several decades. An individual’s holding ranged from one acre to five acres.
“We should be cultivating the plants inside the tank for more than a century. My father and grandfather were cultivating here,” A. Ayothi (62), a local farmer, said.
The farmers cultivated the plants for three months from April, K. Angusamy, a farmer from Mudhunal, told The Hindu .
They harvested eight to 10 tonnes of cucumber and small bitter gourd per acre in two months.
The cucumber and bitter gourd grown in the tank commanded a good demand in the market as the farmers neither used manure nor fertilizers, V. Senthilkumar, a farmer from Mudhunal, who has cultivated both cucumber and bitter gourd in one and a half acres.
Thirty days after sowing, the plants got ready for cultivation in May and from then on, farmers and vendors from nearby villages have been making a beeline for the fields.
V. Ammal (47) of Ammankoil has been selling cucumber and bitter gourd in Paramakudi bus stand for more than 20 years and earned about Rs. 1,000 per day after meeting out the transport expenses. She and scores of other small vendors directly procured the products from the fields.
The vendors buy five pieces of cucumber for Rs. 2 and sold them for Rs. 10 in the market. Similarly, they buy bitter gourd for Rs. 20 per a ‘measure’ and sold it for Rs. 60. After carrying head loads of their produces to the bank, they transported them to market places in autorickshaws and carriage vans.
