Ms. Kamala Bidari, 39, lives in Naukila tole of Thakre Rural Municipality with her son, father and mother in law. Her husband Siva Bidar works as labour in foreign country. (katar). Ms Kamala and her father in law used to work in field for vegetable farming since earlier. Due to insufficient technical knowledge related to agriculture, they were not able to yield expected results from their efforts in farming. It was hard to manage livelihood of Bidari family despite their hard work.
Ms. Kamala is very active and hard- working women. She is a secretary of “Seti Devi Farmer Group” facilitated and supported by FOSTER project. She had received trainings on Group Management, Saving and Credit, Vegetable Nursery Raising, Plant Protection and Management (IPM), Post- harvest management, through the project.
“I gain knowledge on several new techniques like soil solarization, seedling raising in plastic tray, use of coco pit and nylon net, proper handling of different tools of IPM and making liquid manure (jhol-mol) through the trainings,” she shared. Project supported quality improved vegetable seeds of different high yielding varieties (J- power, Green hero and Green coronate) of cabbage.
After taking technical training in vegetable farming, she purchased nursery plastic sheet, fertilizers, micronutrients, extra seeds of cabbage herself and applied skills that she learned during the training. She has planted vegetable (cabbage) in 3 ropani (1500 sq m) of land.
“We produced 3500 kg of cabbage and earned One hundred and twenty thousand rupees from the investment of about Rs 12,000 in this season. It became easier to me now to spend in household expenses and educate my son. I have saved 11,000 rupees from that income for future needs. My family is also more supportive to me nowadays towards my work and labour.
Now we are thinking to put our all efforts to continue seasonal and off seasonal vegetable farming in commercial way,” she shared.