An incident that keeps coming to mind shows how much money our family was short of. I was 14 years old at the time. I needed 35 rupees to enroll in grade 8. My parents couldn't even afford that, so I had to drop out of school.

After leaving school, I did not even feel like moving around in the village. In 2049 BS, I left my studies and went to Punjab, India to work as a laborer. I worked there for 14 years. With the money I earned through hard work, I returned home and bought one bigha of land and seven ropani fields. I built a four-room house in the village. After this, I thought, why go to Punjab to earn money? And I started farming here.

Farming was only good for food. Since I had no savings, I moved from Sharda-5, Pipalneta and came to Srinagar in 2068 BS. I took a loan and built a house. After running a hotel in the same house, I earned good money.

Everything was going well. After the spread of the Corona epidemic in 2076 BS, the hotel business came to a standstill. I was forced to close the hotel for three months and stay indoors. Due to which, I had to bear a loss of about one lakh in a month. Debts kept increasing in Thapla. The hotel business, which had slowed down due to the Corona epidemic, could not flourish after that.

It was difficult to repay the debt after there was no income. What to do for a while? I had to do something. It seemed like a rut. As per everyone's advice, after the Corona epidemic subsided in 2078 BS, I joined the buffalo farming business. Now, buffalo farming has become the main and fastest way to earn my income.

The money earned from buffalo farming has made it easier to build a house, run a hotel, and repay the loans taken from the bank when sending our children abroad. Initially, I opened the Sharda Unity Buffalo Farm in Sukkhola, Sharda-11. I started buffalo farming with a loan of Rs 20 lakh and by adding Rs 35 lakh to it, I built a hut and started buffalo farming. Due to the cold, I have shifted the buffalo farm from there to Srinagar. I have been raising buffaloes on a lease of 13 ropanis of land, paying an annual rent of 50,000 rupees. Currently, there are 21 buffaloes and 7 cows, both small and large, that give milk. They give 60 liters of milk daily. They earn more than 1 lakh rupees per month. There are four people in the family. Both the children have gone abroad to study and earn. There is only a husband and wife at home.

I am now 45 years old. My wife and I work 8 hours a day on the farm. We are doing a turnover of 2 million rupees annually by selling milk, padapadi, and fertilizer. The cows and buffaloes raised on the farm cost about 1 million rupees on feed, hay, medicine, land rent, electricity, and water. I am saving about 1 million khokha per year.

The money I earn from buffalo farming has made it easier to pay off the loans I have taken from the bank for building a house, running a hotel, and sending my children abroad. I pay more than 100,000 rupees in installments to the bank every month. I am also making up for the losses I incurred while doing the hotel business through buffalo farming. The hotel business, which has slowed down since the Corona pandemic, has not been able to flourish yet.