Our Collectives

The nature of farm activities at the Poomaale Collective is getting more experimental. New initiatives to calibrate the food intake of each member are in progress. They will help us understand the quantity of food we need to grow to suffice and the variety we need for a nutritious, balanced diet. In addition, water and waste management activities like greywater recycling took place. We have also procured a good variety of native heirloom seeds, a one-time purchase, to build our seed banks and become seed-sufficient down the line. The highlight, however, was the occasional visits from vipers, crates and even the Indian Cobra to our farm which is an indicator of a fertile coffee farm. We look forward to a merry and eventful winter at the collective.

Work is in full steam as the monsoon has finally given way to winter. The first month will be restricted to post-monsoon maintenance work which is a must in these parts – repairs and de-weeding the roads, retailing the damaged roofs, correcting the moisture damage to walls, equipment and furniture etc.

On the farm front, we are excited to partner with Clea Chandmal to try out the forest floor way for coffee. We are starting with three experimental blocks capturing different zones in the estate to make sure we have a robust solution.

The highlight of the month was Coffee Santhe, an annual event that brings together the coffee community – planters, roasters, baristas, cuppers etc. For us, it was eye-opening to witness the depth of the coffee industry. The surprise, however, was the feedback we got for our robusta coffee, with some Q-graders referring to it as ‘A beauty’ and our coffee scoring between 83 and 86.5 (rare for a coffee in general and almost unheard of for robusta). We are now looking forward to streamlining our practices to give traceability across the zone and some interesting post-harvest practices to enhance the taste and scores even further.

Kodagu comes to a halt during the monsoons. You will find most people sipping chai on a planter’s chair, waiting for sunset.

But this time we took on a few micro-projects and built some nice makeshift shelters for the veggie beds and compost pits and started the process. While the composting didn’t go as well because of the moisture, we realised we needed to add a lot more carbon than normal to offset that. It’s not called failure if you’ve learned something in the process! But overall, things seem good right now. The leafies are coming out well and the gourds too.

The Blyton Bungalow opened to members and we engaged with folks with tons of hospitality experience to train our team in barefoot luxury (a term we have grown increasingly fond of). A month into the process, the team is doing some great work. We have hosted a few families and the feedback has been phenomenal. We have also leveraged the local understanding of the flora and fauna by picking our naturalists from the local tribal hamlet and training them on the narrative experience. This was an extremely productive exercise, and they were more than eager to learn.

Poomaale received a whopping 186 inches of rainfall this monsoon. Coupled with the 13 inches of rain received in March, we are mostly landing in the excess rainfall zone (~200 inches of rain with a month of monsoon to go). The good news is that despite all this rain, the Kembuva Poley runs crystal clear and even more exciting things are shaping up here.

To begin with, the veggie beds now have beans, bottle gourd, radish, coriander, red amaranthus, tomato, ridge gourd and sweet corn among the species that are at the germination stage. Despite the heavy monsoons and the presence of wildlife, we have successfully created a nursery which hosts a multitude of plants from arabica coffee to silk cotton and from papaya to avocado. We can’t wait for October when we start planting these little guys to create a forest friendly estate where coffee is just one of the layers.

With the Blyton Bungalow finally completed, our hospitality team is working diligently towards creating a warm and memorable experience for guests. The team has picked up the ropes really well with Ravi anna (our chef) now making vegan meals on request.