Chola Cardamom

Surrounded by imperial forests on the 2 sides, the Elango family’s ancient food forest is lush with black pepper vines, nutmeg trees, hill bananas, squirrels, majestic areca nut palms, indigenous pineapples among a myriad of endemic flora. A bio-diverse food forest high in the misty Kolli Hills of Tamil Nadu - where waterfalls roar and wild elephants emerge from the fog.

A porous, aerated soil teeming with microbial life - one that doesn’t just hold water and nutrients, but literally breathes. When you walk through the farm, you can feel it - the spongey softness of healthy earth underfoot. The cardamom plants respond. They stand taller. Their leaves gleam. Their pods grow fuller and more aromatic, thanks to the nutrients drawn deep from the soil that breathes.

In a spice-growing region rife with chemical pesticides & toxic flowering hormones, the Elango family chooses a different path: time-honoured farming practices, innovative pest control techniques like light trap, sticky trap and intercropping to keep pest attacks minimal. Hundreds of hours of manual labour after, lush cardamom trees bear potent pods brimming with flavour.

Desi (native) cows are the king of the farm. 5 cow products contribute to the making of a bio stimulant and soil fertility enhancing formulation called Panchakavya. Fresh cow dung, cow urine, milk, curd, and ghee. These ingredients are combined with jaggery (to fuel fermentation) and fresh coconut water (to activate microbial growth), then left to ferment into a living, potent tonic for the soil.