This Pongal, weekend farmers celebrate fruit of their labour

It is that time of the year when there is a nip in the air, the aroma of rice boiling over fills the house, and the urbane crave for a slice of agrarian existence.
Celebrating the idea of a rustic life, people are taking a break from the concrete jungle to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in farmland on the city's outskirts.
While some are volunteering to work as farmhands, others are taking the plunge and purchasing land for a full-fledged farming experience, and all of it with an organic message.
For IT professional Deepa A, Pongal has been about the family coming together at her grandparents' house, performing rituals involving worship the cattle and grain, and sharing a hearty meal of home-cooked food. “It is a time of nostalgia and since I am interested in organic farming I have been volunteering on farms. This time I went to a site near Avadi to try my hand at harvesting with a sickle,“ says Deepa, who often gets her 10-year-old son to accompany her on her farmers' day out. The weekend she says is a time for celebration at another friend's farm.theThough Pongal marks the end of harvest season, members of Valam Community Farm, which was formed a few weeks ago, will mark this weekend as the beginning of their farming initiative.
“We are a group of 25, mostly IT professionals, with an interest in farming. We have leased a 5.2-acre farm near Chengalpet and plan to organically grow a traditional variety of paddy,“ says Gopinath Jayaraja, one of the founding members of the group. This Sunday, the group will be crushing eggshells, mixing them with dry fish scales and fruit peels to make an organic nutrient for the soil to prepare the soil for the coming season.
“This initiative is not to earn money but for people to learn farming,“ says Jayaraj.
While it will take a while for Jayaraj and his team to reap the fruits of their labour, Pongal came early for Jaya Hepzibah, who cultivated her first crop in December from her 2-acre farm near Ranipet, 100km from the city. “I have always wanted to try organic farming. Last July, I managed to convince my husband to buy a plot of land where I could grow paddy,“ says the 43-year-old homemaker, who then contacted Chennai Green Commune. With a little help from the organic farming group, Hepzibah set out to turn her land into a patch of organic green among farms that practised chemical farming.
“I was told by farmers to go back and not try to bring ideas to the village that are unprofitable,“ she says. “But I was persistent and at the end of 120 days I had 1,400kg of native samba variety rice. A sweet pongal for me I would say, as some dealers also offered to buy my crop,“ says Hepzibah, who cannot wait to start working for the next season and plans to convert another 2-acre land into a poultry farm with a vegetable patch.