Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
John Updike
As I looked to the wise Internet for ideas for a title for this post, I learned that there are over 200 words for rain in the Hawaiian language.
When is Kona’s rainy season? Roughly April-October. In other words, summer, plus and minus. Summer is often the drier season on most of the same island and the rest of the Hawaiian islands. There are many micro-climates on the island, and rain is very localized. It isn’t at all uncommon that you are sitting under a rain cloud, and one mile away, it’s dry and the sun is shining.
It has been raining daily, usually in the late afternoon or night, sometimes HARD. And all that water? It just goes into the ground! It’s not muddy or full of puddles. There aren’t little streams or erosion through the land. Lava rock is amazing. For one thing, we don’t have a lot of loose topsoil. The land is rocky with a light layer of soil on top. Once the sun is out for a while, you don’t see much evidence of all the rain that came down overnight. It’s this reliable rain and sun that allows us to farm without irrigating. But the climate has been changing, and there have been many years of severe drought. No drought here this year, though; it has been a good year for rain. And the trees are producing!
At the end of September, we’ve already picked more coffee than all of last season. And we’ve already picked another round in October and have more upcoming. This will be a good year for us. This newspaper article from a month ago describes well the rain and coffee situation. And this WHT article from yesterday talks about rain and all the many micro-climates on Hawaii island.
The parchment for our first large picking has dried for just over 60 days now, so soon it will be dry milled and we’ll be able to offer roasted coffee again. Season 2 for Bea’s Knees Farm.
Rain in the last six months. Rain in the past ten years.