Natural Jaggery Preparation - Kotthur Village
 
We Thank the people of Kotthur Village near Tiruthani, who had spent their valuable time in explaining Jaggery  Preparation
Many of must have had a chance to eat sugar cane, one time or the other.
sugar cane is cultivated mainly in winter climate, there are two different types of
sugarcanes, one is the brownish type, which we see commonly during the festivals
such as the Ganesh Pooja, and Pongal. There is one more type which is white
in color, which we see commonly along the road side where there are fresh sugarcane juice vendors.
White sugarcane have a very rich content in sugar, white sugar cane is the main source of raw material in a sugar factory to manufacture sugar.
It is not possible for each and every farmer who cultivates sugarcane, to depend on a sugar factory to purchase their canes, and more over the huge machineries, manpower and investment is involved in manufacturing sugar and Jarregy.
      Farmers have found a very simple method, which involves special iron vessels and a single machine to manufacture Jaggery. Which is the simplest way to do so.
Let us start off the process.
The following steps are involved in preparing Jaggery
 Step 1. Cutting sugar cane from fields
 Step 2. Feeding the grinder to extract juice
 Step 3. Boiling the juice
 Step 4. Adding Ingredients
 Step 5. Tray Feeding
 Step 6. Jaggery output
Let us go in detail about each and every step involved.
 
 Step1:
          Fresh sugarcanes are cut from the fields, canes are cut in such a way that the head and tail are chopped off. They are carefully brought in a plastic sack, to the place where they are made juice.
 
Step2 :
          To extract juice from the sugarcane, they use a small power run machine, where at one side four or five canes are fed, and at the other end, extracted sugar cane juice is directly feed to the vessel.
 
Step3 :
         Next step involved is boiling the extracted juice, juice is feed to a large big iron vessel, which is usually called as kadai as the below.

heating unit of the vessel is set up in such a way that, at a single stretch two vessels are boiled, heating unit is nothing but a small pit above which this vessel is placed,
there is a man who keeps on adding fuel to the heating unit from a small opening,
fuel to the heating unit is just the extract which is obtained after juice has been taken from the canes, these extract are dried in sunlight and used as a fuel for heating.

Picture : Man feeding heating the vessel, you can see the fuel around the vessel
             where the man sitting pushes the fuel to the hole, a little by little.
The juice is boiled in the vessel for at least three hours, until the liquid juice becomes a semisolid paste.
 
Step4 :
         When juice becomes a semisolid paste, small quantity of sodium carbonate is added as a reducing agent, which helps in making Jaggery balls.
 
Step5 :
         After stirring well until the juice becomes a semisolid paste, the paste is feed to
a iron tray. With the help of a long wood stick, at one end which contains a flat
block they stir well again in the tray, until more thickening comes.
 

Picture : People are stirring the Jaggery paste in the tray
 

Picture : Jaggery paste ready for making balls
 
 Step6 :
           With help of a wet cloth, hot Jaggery paste are made as balls
precautions are taken, to prepare the balls as fast as possible, as the paste gets to the solid state with in a short span of time.

Picture : Final output of Jaggery

 
For a single feed of vessel, they get approximately around 100 kg of Jaggery,
they get around fifty Jaggery balls, Jaggery are stored and sold as a complete bulkcart.For a single bulk cart they get a market price of approximately 20000/- twenty thousand rupees.
 
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Article By
Surekha