It’s amazing to see a chopping board perfectly crafted and ready to use in your kitchen. Do you know what goes into making these chopping boards? This article focuses on how we create our chopping boards, where the wood comes from, and how long it actually takes for us—from chopping the tree down to delivering your chopping board.
Why We Cut Mango Trees
We are mango farmers, and cutting down mango trees seems to be the opposite of what we are meant to do. However, mango trees are productive only for 20–30 years. After 30 years, the trees grow too big to maintain in traditional farming. We do not get labour to pluck the fruits even when they are productive, and the risk of injuries and deaths to labourers who pick the fruits is high.
For trees that are unproductive, it creates a loss of revenue for farmers. Ethically, cutting down a tree is frowned upon. We, too, do not like the fact that we have to cut down a 30-year-old tree. We have trees that are older than 80 years on our farm, which we have delayed cutting. Sentimental reasons, like the tree being planted by our grandfather, were one of the reasons.
But in the present scenario, the trees are taking up too much space, generate no revenue, and are at risk of falling at any point in time. Monsoons are heavy, and branches of the tree are too big, often falling during windy conditions and monsoons.
A lot of discussions, back and forth on decisions, and delays have been happening for years now. Eventually, after one of the big trees fell during the monsoons, we all agreed that it was at risk as it was very near the neighbour’s house. A few meters to the right, and the tree would have been on top of the house, probably killing or injuring the occupants.
Cutting the Tree
Once the decision was made, we decided to cut down all trees that had been hard to manage. Before that, we had to replant an equal number of trees or more in the same area. We started planting saplings in 2021, and the saplings were growing under the shade of the large trees. The saplings are slow to grow with minimal sunlight, but the roots are now strong after 3 years. The decision to cut the trees was put into action.
We contacted a few lumber mills and sawmills to find the price for cutting the trees and how we could sell the wood. Each tree would produce tons of wood, and more than 50% of the wood was large blocks that could be used for furniture or construction. Unfortunately, mango wood was not the preferred material for furniture in Kerala, and the price for mango wood would amount to less than ₹8,000–10,000 per tree. The cost involved in cutting the tree and transportation was higher than the price of the wood we would sell.
This was going to cause more delays until we came upon the idea of crafting our own products from the wood at the farm.
We had several problems with that too. We did not have the experience to create products from wood. We are farmers, not carpenters. We also had no idea what to sell and how to sell these products. A bit of searching on Google and marketplaces revealed that mango wood did have a good market online, but some of the ideas seemed a bit impractical.
For instance, I came across a post where someone sold mango wood, which was available for free at our farm. Mango leaves, for instance, were sold for ₹9 per bunch! But some of the interesting products we saw were chopping boards, platters, and trays. We thought these were easy to create.
Finding the Right Crew: Carpenters for Chopping Boards!
Finding labour in this part of the country is hard. It took us 2 weeks to find a carpenter who would agree to work on the project. He told us what to do and how to do it. We realised that creating chopping boards required a lot more than just chopping up the wood into the right sizes and shipping it off to customers.
The process was explained in depth by our lead carpenter, Narayanan Unni. We had to cut the tree and leave it to rest for at least 2 weeks. The longer the tree was rested or cured, the better the shades in the wood would be. We had to ensure that the wood did not warp.
The cuts we had decided initially were at the height of 1 inch. He recommended 1.25 inches for the height of the wood to ensure that the wood would not warp. He also recommended that the tree, once cut, should be cured for at least 2 weeks before cutting. Once cut, the slabs or long boards should be further stored in shade for at least a month before processing. This was going to eat up a lot of our time and space.
But we had to do it to ensure that the quality of the product was maintained.
Creation of Chopping Boards
The process of creating a chopping board was simple. We had already decided that we did not want to complicate the process. We preferred single-wood chopping boards to reduce the cost of labour.
The cost of single-wood chopping boards was high in the market, but we decided to sell them at the same price as joint-wood chopping boards. We had no plans to create joint-wood chopping boards, though we did have plans for trays and platters made of joint wood in the future.
The long boards were first planed for an even surface, then cut and sanded for a perfect finish. We further created juice grooves with a router and finished the edges for smooth corners. Once satisfied, we sanded the chopping boards one more time before finishing them with edible coconut oil from our farm.
We are not sure if this is a profitable venture yet. We will continue to create more products and move forward to create sustainable products from our farm. We realise that this small part of the project, which runs side by side with the farm, adds employment to 3–4 more people regularly. It also adds visibility and a product in the farm’s name, which could enhance the brand’s name slowly over time.