PeriyaThottam

29/09/2025

27/09/2025

Nature teaching Fibonnaci series through this Papaya Spiral at PeriyaThottam 😃

19/09/2025

The day we rediscovered Fire!

The Biogas plant in the Farm ran out of Gas half way through cooking. Turns out we did not load enough cow dung regularly.

'No worries, we got a back up!' - this was from a proud Me to my Wife.

The cooking I meant - making Dosa in a cast iron Dosai Kal :-)

'We are in the middle of a Power Cut!!' - She shouted back.

'Even if there is Power, we can't use This DosaiKal in our induction stove because this is not induction friendly' - came the next punch.

"Ha! When living in a Farm, be like a Farmer!!" - This was me shouting back with Joy!

With that quip, I loaded our Viragu Aduppu (English translation not needed; the image itself speaks :-)) and lit a ball of crumpled newspaper sheet. Mind you, we built one last year but we didn't have any practical experience using it so we never touched it till this day due to other options we have.

In no time, we had our first ever Viragu Aduppu cooked Dosa Meal in our Married life :-)

Made of just our Farm Soil, Our Country Stove has two burners. Once you fire One, the second burner draws some heat automatically and hence we could make Dosa and reheat Sambar at the same time. So easy and so breezy; all it takes is a handful of dry twigs and wood logs!

And, it was a beautiful experience, the aroma and smoke wafting around while we munched on the hot food, with verdant green all around :-)

The catch: Unlike a Gas Stove or Induction stove, you don't turn off this Viragu Aduppu once you finish cooking. They go off on their own when the last bit of burnable material is burnt :-)

You know what? We used to roast Tamarind seeds in this ember in our ancestral home when we were kids so even this ember was used to its full potential.

(In a way this Stove is a Time Travel Machine and that was the foremost reason we got one built.)

The Ash that is all that remains in the Stove, is collected and applied on plants and soil to make the soil richer and the plants pest-free. What a beautiful circle of giving with Zero garbage!!

We will buy Earthen pots to make the post cooking cleaning experience also a breeze ;-)

15/09/2025

This is how we do it ;-)

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

07/09/2025

Hi All,

We have started next batch of Coconut oil extraction process in the farm. This video gets us an 'up close and personal' exposure to the copra extraction process from the broken coconuts.

Oil will be ready in about two weeks.

Thanks for your continued support, as always!

24/08/2025

23/08/2025

Imagine putting a lid on a 60,000 litre water storage tank!

Why did we do just that?

Abundant growth of Algae in the tank keeps choking the Venturi in our drip delivery line atleast a dozen times a month at unpredictable frequency thereby knocking out the quality of delivery plus life of the delivery motor.

So we did this herculean task of cleaning up a 65000 liter storage tank and put a lid (shade net) on it using our farm sourced wooden poles, coconut husks for scrapping the algae (they work best!), stones found in the farm to tie down the corners so that heavy winds wont sweep off the cover - all work done entirely by our regular farm hands.

It took a full day but worth every morsel of the algae pile we scrapped off ;-)

P.S: We do have fish in there but the Algae outgrows them, so this problem:-)

22/08/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/C4i8lg3L7v8?si=3HYYnQiPfBTRpOtb

All the poles were harvested from our own bamboo grove :-)

22/08/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/gV4upaLuXGo?si=nrSJlI5KwPDJ3xuE

Roasting cashews release CNSL, an oil that reacts strongly with skin but loved by Paint makers and adhesive makers! A very laborious process to do it manually. Mechanization makes sense with large volumes but we in our Little farm with a Big heart only produce for our needs so we roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Roasting cashews release CNSL, an oil that reacts strongly with skin but loved by Paint makers and adhesive makers! A very laborious process to do it manuall...

20/08/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/G2r6j6Mg5Yw?si=HYGGDd3JFXpIPAKU

The latex from this tree was known as Chicle. This was used in the original Chewing Gums manufactured under the brand name 'Chiclets'! - Does it ring a Bell? 😃

In 1960s, the original latex (chicle) was replaced by Petroleum based gums. So, those gums we chewed since then were actually "Petrolets" and not 'Chicle'ts😃

Am not joking, by the way :-)

18/08/2025