Farmers keep date with tradition before harvest

 Ramanaveni Laxmi is offering puja in her cotton field 

Following the age-old tradition, farmers today also boil milk and letting it overflow before starting the process to pick the cotton during the harvest season in their agriculture fields in North Telangana districts.

Farmers boil the milk and let it overflow onto the ground wishing the high cotton yield like overflow milk and use the milk similar to that of cotton.  

They then drop five cotton bolls in the remaining milk in the pot. This is the traditional way of offering Naivedyam to the god before start cotton picking.

The farmers put up five stones calling them as Panchapandavulu with white wash at the place where they offer traditional puja in the cotton fields.

Ramanaveni Laxmi of Kumari village in Neredigonda said they perform special puja in the cotton field before they start cotton picking and generally they start picking on an auspicious Panchami or Navami days or Sunday, Thursday or Fridays.

She said they take pure milk in a small pot to the cotton field and boil the bilk till it overflows onto the ground, wishing that the cotton yield would also overflow in that season. Generally, farmers break the coconut as part of the puja and apply turmeric and vermilion to the stones.

Sangepu Borranna of Gaurapur village Indravelli mandal said the tradition of boiling milk and letting it overflow (Palu Ponginchadam) can be seen in house warming ceremony and the same is practiced before cotton picking starts.

"Adivasis do not pluck the vegetables they raised without performing a traditional puja in the agriculture field", he said and added that Adivasis cook the curry with the vegetables borrowed from the neighboring non- tribal farmers’.

"The Adivasi eat the food with that curry prepared in the field before they start plucking the vegetables such as tomato, Mirchi, lady-finger and brinjal", Borranna said.