One acre farming in one year - 3 - peanut oil, chillies and black gram

February - May : growing peanuts, black gram and chillies

Once the Kattuyanam rice we'd sowed in one portion of the land was harvested, followed by the harvest of the peanut and Chandikar rice portion, we tilled both these portions together to prepare the land for our next batch of mixed crops. The previous polycultural patch of horse gram, beans, foxtail millet and green gram was left untouched thanks to their continued yield.

Here in the village, after harvesting rice grown during the monsoon, most farmers plant watermelon* for the summer. Rice seeds fallen from the previous harvest which naturally begin to grow on the land are now looked at as unwanted 'weeds'. Herbicides, also known as weedicides, are then bought and sprayed onto the offending rice crop to wipe them out. This in spite of existing practices which costs next to nothing where rice can be grown as an inter-crop or as a temporary ground cover crop, which can later be chopped and turned to 'mulch' used to enrich the soil.

 It's a win-win for farmers and the land but thanks to the ever present agro-chemical industry which demands its profits, such practices are brushed aside.

(*Watermelons are the village favourite to plant come summer. Farmers here bordered on manic as they advised Mani and me to put aside our 'whatever' farming and fully plant our land with watermelons this summer season. The reason for their watermelon craze was because, if luck permits, it gives a huge profit when compared to other crops. Although equally, it takes a toll with the amount of expensive pesticides and fertilizers one would have to buy for the current 'improved' hybrids to even grow. This bit of accounting is usually side-stepped in conversation with the watermelongelists. This year, whole fields of watermelon perished thanks to a viral disease which spread across the village. With everyone planting watermelon, it wasn't hard for the disease to spread easily. Middlemen ended up buying the surviving watermelons at a much lower rate than bargained. Still, disapproving head nodding didn't cease because Mani and I didn't plant watermelons.)

With the newly tilled land ahead of us, we decided to start with planting peanuts first. We planted the same variety of peanuts we'd harvested the previous season, seeing how they survived with little water and needed very little tending to. We decided to convert our peanut harvest this time to peanut oil (கடலை எண்ணெய்) and ended up devoting large sections of the land with peanuts, which we bordered with rows of black gram (உளுந்து).

Following this, we sowed seeds of sesame (எள்ளு) and peanuts together in another patch. We had decided on growing sesame with the intention of making sesame oil or gingelly oil as it's otherwise called (நல்லெண்ணெய்).  The sesame seeds unfortunately didn't even sprout, but on the plus side, we had ourselves another growing batch of peanuts to make into peanut oil.

Time and again, we were shown how by following the very simple practice of mixed cropping and polycultural farming, we never had to face the full blow of crop failure which monocultural farming brings.

The last portion of the land next to the millet inter-crop, we tilled and planted with chilli saplings given to us by one of Mani's relatives in the village ("You'll get a good profit with chillies! Plant chillies!"). Chillies are a water intensive crop so Mani and I decided to plant them in a very small patch on the land to placate the family. It was quite the festive air which surrounded us with a lot of people joining us that day to plant the chillies.

By May, we began harvesting the black gram and few of the chillies, while also looking for land to buy for ourselves and farm in. Putting in so much of ourselves into the land and watching it transform only to leave it behind, was not something we wanted to repeat.

This sentiment however was shared very differently by our neighbouring farmers and family in the village. They were happy that we were finally going to be working on our own land and not on, "that man's land". 'That man' referring to our landowner who under the caste system came under the category 'Chakkiliyan' and hence was considered 'less than' by everyone else in the village. Never mind that he was a farmer just like everyone around us and several decades old at that. Never mind that when Mani and I first started looking for land, the 'namma jaadi' brigade of villagers and farming family didn't extend an ounce of help and it was only because of the kindness of this man, neither 'namma jaadi' nor family, that we finally got land to farm in.

(In Tamil, people refer to others of their caste under the collective term 'namma jaadi' or நம்ம சாதி. Caste discrimination isn't referred to as caste discrimination but instead practised as a 'way of life'.)

By the end of the month and our year's lease, our peanuts were finally ready to be harvested. We harvested by hand within the day and in the end we had a massive amount of peanuts. So much so we had to bring in a tipper truck to load the harvest. It was exhilarating seeing so much produce from a crop which in the past three months required little water and no application of even diluted cow urine to help it grow. (Diluted cow urine is an easy to obtain, cheap alternative to industrial fertilizers and pesticides. It nourishes the soil and when sprayed on plants, helps prevent pest attacks and diseases from spreading.)

Two days of manually removing the peanuts from the plant and three days of drying them later, the peanuts were ready to be taken to the oil press. 

The nearest oil press was in the town Thirukazhukundram and in present times where you can buy oil in supermarkets, I was surprised by the number of people who still preferred buying from the oil press directly. There were a number of farmers coming to the press with bag after bag of their harvest knowing exactly what they had to do amidst the chaos. Seeing that this was our first time at the press and 'young people' at that choosing to do farming, Mani and I were showered with kindness when we asked for help. We were graciously directed through every step of extracting the peanut oil by the people who worked at the press. Lemon and salt was added to our peanut oil much to the surprise of seasoned customers who had never had this addition to their oils done before ("You never asked!" was the humoured reply). The person working the press explained to us that lemon and salt would help naturally preserve the oil longer from spoiling and would bring down the sharp taste of peanut oil.

Honestly by the end of the day, Mani and I were gushing with gratitude as we headed out with our cans of pristine peanut oil.

Mani's mum sowing the peanut seeds as the land gets tilled

Mani sowing the sesame seeds with the peanuts to create a mixed crop patch

Divisions of the peanut patch sowed with black gram

Mani and his mum working on the water harvesting trench around the chilli patch

Chilli patch ready with rows of bunds made to plant the saplings on. The mixed millet patch is to the left

Watering the chilli patch - Mani's aunt Tamilarasi and brother-in-law Dhanasekhar helping out

The large turnout of friends and family who came to help us plant the chillies

Planting the chilli saplings - the kids had a field day playing with the water

Rows of chilli saplings planted

Black gram growing on the border of the large peanut patch

Peanut plants beginning to flower

Checking on the chillies as they struggle to grow in the summer heat

Some of the harvested chillies and black gram

A tipper truck full of harvested peanuts

One of the bottles of our very own peanut oil (கடலை எண்ணெய்)

P.S. Mani and I finally found land for ourselves in June :)

The day we officially registered the land in both our names :)