Wednesday in the packing shed: how 3,400 boxes come together
From the first farm van at noon to the last delivery bike at 11 am Thursday, here is what happens to your vegetables in between.
A Pongal week from the farm box
Sugarcane, new rice, turmeric plants and the vegetables for kootu: what we pack for Pongal and how to use all of it.
Pongal in the Kongu region is a harvest festival in the truest sense, and it is the one week of the year when our farm box changes shape completely. For the box delivered on the Thursday before Bhogi, our farmers harvest for the festival, not just for the week.
Each Pongal box carries two stalks of sugarcane, a turmeric plant with its leaves for tying around the pot, a kilo of new-harvest ponni rice from a farm near Gobichettipalayam, and fresh jaggery from a crusher near Udumalpet. The vegetables are the ones for the festival kootu: pumpkin, ash gourd, broad beans, raw banana, sweet potato, yam and field beans. Add-ons include a clay pot for ₹180 and a bundle of mango leaves for the doorway.
On the day, make sakkarai pongal with the new rice, jaggery, moong dal and ghee, and the vegetable kootu with the seven vegetables cooked together in a coconut and cumin paste. Keep the sweet potato and yam aside for Mattu Pongal the next day, when they are boiled and offered with the cattle.
Orders for the Pongal box close on the Monday before, because our farmers need to know how much cane to cut. The box costs ₹1,150, a little more than the weekly box, because sugarcane and turmeric plants are heavy and bulky to carry. Regular subscribers get it in place of their usual box unless they ask otherwise.
