The entire farm is pesticide and chemical free, which has a telling effect on the produce. Today, it is a model farm for many organic farmers across India. It has been developed like a forest and the verdant surroundings play host to various species of birds and small animals.Īt The Shandy, there are rigorous standards in place to ensure that all the products are natural and of high quality.

All the farms that we source from are inspected on a regular basis by our team. The farmers who send their produce to The Shandy are people who have been working with us on this mission for the past 15 to 20yrs.I’ll confess right off, vadan samba isn’t the most exciting rice to work with. It hasn’t the lore and promise of maapillai samba, for example. Story goes, maapillai samba was a near forgotten rice some decades ago when a farmer who had some seed slowly it revived as our penchant for so-called “red rices” as healthier alternatives to white grew. But there were always those who had not forgotten-the farmer, for one, and those agrarian communities that still understood this as a rice specially suited to male health, imparting the sort of strength, energy and basis for forbearance that young men particularly need as they ready themselves for marriage and life’s long travails. So the rice was served by brides’ parents to their would-be sons-in-law, who had to prove themselves in sports like jalikattu or the lifting of an enormous rock called the “ ilavatta kal.” Feeding a bridegroom mapillai samba, usually on the second day of Saiva Pillai/Vellalar weddings, was a way of both acknowledging and ensuring his continued strength. Vadan Samba has no such wondrous tales of community and significance, nor really any particularly noteworthy mention in historical records (as of this writing). Namma Nellu/CIKS mentions somewhat tantalizingly in passing that this rice has the distinction of apparently having been named among 100-odd sen-nel or unique rice varieties in the Pazhani Cheppu Pattayam (Pazhani Copper Inscriptions) from 1528, published by the Tamil Nadu State Archaeology Department in 1995, lines 133-151. This inscription apparently tells of a meeting of Chera, the Chola, and Pandiya representatives discussing cultivation techniques, water management, harvesting methods, and the construction of a common place for free food supply (CIKS 2019).

#Manvasanai organic store chennai for free# But it’s only வாலன் listed (lines 133-138), at least in this version of the Pattayam that I managed to find, thanks to Raghu of East Gaterr blog.

And whether that old வாலன் became the rice we know today as வாலான், or whether it’s in fact the old word for the present வாடன் is difficult to determine from this source alone. So, out that goes, too, unless proven otherwise. What we do know about vadan samba with greater certainty are a handful of farmers’ growing insights.

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