What a great find! I'd found this place via the Mahindra Homestay website. The site is pretty much what you get in the UK, home owners register when they have a spare room for people to rent for holiday stays. So, found a plantation house in the middle of Kerala, with 25 acres of rubber and banana trees and a swimming pool. Great place, very relaxed and the owners looking after us very well. Miles away from anywhere, we decided to eat with the family each day. This entails a full Indian cooked breakfast, full spread at lunchtime, tea at 5pm then full evening meal at 9pm! Even if I did have the energy to do anything I am too full!
Spent the morning taking an extensive tour of the Platation, right from a demo of cutting the rubber tree, collecting the rubber, setting the rubber into 1kg moulds, wringing it out, squeezing it flat, drying on the line, drying indoors and finally hanging ready to sell. It is a great set up, the scrap rubber is also sold to make tires etc, the byproduct water is used to make some sort of gas for cooking, all rainwater is havested, even that that falls through the centre of the house into the open court yard, the banana leaves act as a mulch for the rubber trees, the cow slurry is used to make natural fertiliser and the guppy fish in the rain water tanks eat the mosquito lava to reduce the risk of being bitten by mosquitos.
Apart from the rubber and bananas, they also grow - grapefruits, pineapple, cloves, coffee, nutmeg, papya, peppercorns, cocconuts, figs, some sort of gooseberry and chillis. Our guide is Jose Snr or Sanjay Mears as I prefer on the basis that pretty much all he showed us he then ate, inc the outer casing of the nutmeg, a tiny green chilli and a banana flower. One of the best things about growing all of this stuff means that the food travels minimal distance from picking to the table. We have had everything from fresh grapefruit and pineapple juice for mid morning drink, banana curry for lunch, fresh milk straight from the cows, papya snacks, plantaines, honey, banana syrup from the banana flowers. All in all a very eco friendly set up, struggling to offset the eco disaster that is Mumbai!
Having the pool here is a god send, we have all beenn swimming twice today and the water temperature is just right. Still struggle sometimes to remember that it is November...warmest November I've ever experienced, wearing shorts and having to swim to cool down as it is 30 degrees!
This afternoon, Jose Snr showed us the old part of the plantation house, complete with wood fired stoves and a huge piece of granite teamed up with a rolling pin I could hardly lift for crushing herbs and spices to make up pastes for cooking. Realised that all of our delicious food is prepared by this cook down in the dark bowls of the old house in a few rooms blackened by wood smoke. Quite a contrast to the beautiful surroundings of the new plantation house with its carved wood and marbled floors.
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