All my childhood, I remember rice varieties being identified by a couple of letters and numbers, during monthly grocery haul with my Appa. He would ask for the best table rice for everyday use and idli rice to make weekly idli dosai maavu stash.

When i moved to Tamil Nadu, started networking with seed savers and organic farmers, I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful and evocative names of the paddy varieties. Some of the variety names were especially endearing because they had the names of other ingredients from the garden or pantry. Seeraga Samba, Illuppai Poo Samba, Panaimaram Samba to name a few.

But this one caught my attention: Kothamalli Samba. I have seen red, brown and black rice – short grains and long grains. But Kothamalli Samba was unique. The cute small red grain resembles the shape of Coriander seeds. Kothamalli in Tamil is the name for Coriander. One could confuse this variety for broken rice of a larger grain variety, if one didn’t get to look at the paddy.

Last year, we got Kothamalli Samba to first try out and eventually sell in our store grown by Lakshmi Devi, the celebrated hexagenarian paddy seed saver from the nearby town of Ambasamudram. We got a lot of amazing feedback from all of you : our community of supporters.

Ever since we started on our farming journey, we have always cultivated one white rice and one red rice variety, every year, during monsoon. The choice was easy this year, and thankfully Lakshmi mami had 5 kg paddy seeds to spare. This year, we cultivated Kothamalli Samba in a small plot and got a little more than 3 sacks of paddy. The inputs we used for the land were all locally available or produced : green manure, compost, jeevamrutham, meen amilam, agni-astram. Each sack produces around 40 kilos of rice.

This year, instead of taking it to the rice mill to boil, we parboiled the paddy ourselves and dried it on the farm. Being the most experienced, Valli akka and Aarma thai took the lead. We sun dried it for one day and shade dried it for the next.

Only for milling the rice, we took it to the nearby mill in Ambalavanapuram, Vikramasingapuram. We got it semi polished so that it doesn’t need soaking and it is easy to cook. In addition to using it as a table rice for daily meals, Noushadya also adds it to our idli dosai batter.

After saving some for home consumption and for seed next year, we intend to sell the surplus on our online store over the next couple of months. Please feel free to order – it is now live!

Regards

Sudhakar

9043824660