Houses in Coorg besides being picturesque are also self-sufficient. As estates and scenery fill this land, it becomes difficult to access supermarkets and retail stores, unlike in the cities. Such stores, as tiny as a stretch of road, can be spotted in the small towns that dot Coorg.

As Kodavas generally reside on their estates, driving down to town becomes an arduous task, which happens only once a week.

On account of this inaccessibility to town, there exists a lovely practice carried on for centuries now – ownership of a private Kitchen Garden. Each Kodava household possesses a backyard full of fruits, vegetables and herbs. This Kitchen Garden supplies all things needed for daily cooking, and is both whole and organic.

A Kitchen Garden at Coorg

The freshness of the vegetables that grow in Kitchen Gardens makes the food tastier than it usually is. The sheer sizes of some of these vegetables are enough to leave you awestruck; the tomatoes and chillies are large and healthy, and the yields are abundant all the time.

The West attempts to ape the East’s Kitchen Garden concept.

Tomatoes Growing in the ' Supermarket' at Home

Kitchen Gardens not only help make life in the hills more convenient, but they also provide knowledge regarding where your food comes from and tells you exactly how it’s grown. When your vegetables grow at home, no chemicals are used. Additionally, you use organic mulch to fertilize the soil, thereby making the whole process ‘organic’.

Back home in Coorg, my grandma has a Kitchen Garden that she’s proud of. It keeps her busy and simultaneously helps ‘produce’ quality organic vegetables. Chillies, Tomatoes, Bringal, Curry Leaves, Mint, and so on grow here.

Grandma loves watching her vegetables grow and tending to them. Everyone who visits her leaves with a packet of these veggies. This Kodava tradition of ‘giving’ is woven around everything grown in households at Coorg.

Kodavas take great pride in their land and all that’s grown on it, usually distributed to their family and friends. This culture spreads happiness and makes known plentiful crop.

Bavna Achayya

Bavna Achayya is a B.Com student at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore. She is the daughter of a coffee planter from Coorg and is greatly interested in plantations herself. She is passionate about writing and photography and calls the environment her main inspiration.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 2:38 PM and is filed under Culture, Destinations, Environment, Farming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.