From farm to feast: a potful of goodness

The glorious harvest festival of the state has become about watching a new movie and eating pongal out of a pressure cooker for most of us. However, the population that remains who grow their produce share how they’ll be incorporating it in the Pongal feast this year.

Subashree Vijay is known as one of the most successful terrace gardeners in the city. From her kitty, ginger and turmeric have grown in abundance this year. “Both these crops have dual uses — we’ll be using it in the food and to tie around the pongal paanai (pot in which the dish is made). As per custom, crops that a farmer harvests are given to the Sun God like an offering. Turmeric, ginger, sugarcane, banana and coconut are tied with a string around the pot, almost like a mangal sutra,” says Subashree.

On the next day falls Kanu Pongal — a festival when Brahmin ladies pray for the welfare of their brothers. She explains, “We serve sweet pongal, variety rices and more on a turmeric leaf and place it on the terrace for birds to eat. Just like a group of birds never separate, it is believed siblings would always live together.”

A mixed vegetable gravy known as kootu forms a vital part of the festive feast. Subashree says, “It is usually made with 16 vegetables, out of which we grew at least 10 this time!” Yams, air potatoes that grow above the soil on climbers and native varieties of beans like kozhi and pattai avarai are some. She adds, “The taste of homegrown produce is so different from store-bought ingredients. My kids can tell the difference from the taste and fresh aroma.”

On K Saravanan’s self-sustaining agro and dairy farm, the first pongal of the season known as the Sankaranthi pongal is prepared along with mochai kottai (lilva beans) kozhambu. 

Shares this engineer-turned-agriculturist who is based near Coimbatore, “The dishes are made at home by the women and offered first to God. Apart from the beans, we use other produce that we procure from our farm such as cow’s milk to make sweets.” Mochai kottai can also be converted into a snack by roasting it with spices, much like peanuts.

“Tamarind is another crop we harvest this season. We use it some for the festival preparation and store the rest for later,” he says.

Sugarcane, which is an integral part of Pongal, is also harvested during the month of December and served as part of the meal. “These days, however, the harvesting season and Pongal don’t match,” says Ravi Kiran, a next-gen sugarcane farmer in Kancheepuram. When asked why, he replies, “Certain crops like rice used to take six months to grow so during Aadi pattam (mid-July) we would sow for harvest in January.”

When hybrid varieties came in during the 1970s, the duration of crop got reduced — what used to take 180 days to grow would be done in 110 days or less. “For the last couple of years though, we’ve all been following the ways of our ancestors and planting long-term crops,” he notes. 

Sugarcane, on the other hand, takes 365 days to grow so it’s planted roughly a few days after Pongal. A batch of fresh jaggery that’s made from the new harvest arrived on Sunday, he tells us, “We’ll use it to make sweet pongal,” he smiles, clearly excited for the big event.