Retired BHEL employee reaps success with apple farm

The farm became his entire focus point, particularly after the death of his wife Baby Sarojini during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sangareddy: What you would do 10 years after your retirement? After losing a life partner, with both children settled abroad, most would spend time at home along, watching TV or shrinking into oneself.

But Kolly Kishore Babu, 73, decided to break routine. Kishore Babu, who retired as a senior manager (Mechanical Engineering) at BHEL, Hyderabad in 2011, bought a piece of land at Edulapally village in Jharasangam mandal.

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The farm became his entire focus point, particularly after the death of his wife Baby Sarojini during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kishore Babu had survived the Delta variant of the COVID-19 attack after being in hospital for nine days. But the impact that Covid-19 left on his life was hurting, leaving him lonely after nearly five decades of togetherness with Sarojini.

And that is when he decided to turn to farming, and he took a different path there too. Kishore Babu decided to cultivate apples, which are usually not cultivated in these parts of Telangana.

After six months of study, he bought the plants from Maharashtra and took up plantation on three acres. Apple trees usually bear fruit after three years.

However, a few of them on Kishore Babu’s farm started flowering and bearing fruits after barely two years.

Speaking to Telangana Today, Kishore Babu said he had also taken up dates as a mixed crop on the apple farm so that the date palms would give shade to the apple trees.

Saying that apples are normally grown in Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir and other northern parts of India, Kishore Babu said varieties like HRMN 99, Anna and Dorsett Gold would survive in hot climates too.

Agriculture Extension Officer (Zaheerabad) Pradeep Kumar, who took some young horticulture students to Kishore Babu’s farm, called upon the younger generation to draw inspiration from the septuagenarian farmer.