All hail the Rains!!

พายุลูกเห็บที่บ้านดอนตัน

Be careful what you wish for. As we near the end of the long dry season, when the sky is filled with toxic smoke and the heat hangs in the air, one yearns viscerally for rain. In general, the rains in northern Thailand peter out in October, and there is precious little until May. The Build Up to the monsoon season starts in March and April, with thunderstorms and sometimes hail. This evening, we got a bit of both.

About 4 p.m., the sky to the north darkened pleasantly, turning purple and generating a great wind. I was feeding the geese when marble-sized hail started to fall, and I knew it was time to sprint back to the house. By the time I ran the 50 meters or so, the rain was coming down hard. The funny thing about the long dry season in northern Thailand

The wind and hail whipping the neighbor's paddy. No problem for the hardy rice.

is that you forget about rain. One year I forgot how to turn on the windshield wipers in the truck. That sounds stupid, but it had been nearly six months since I’d had to use them. This rain was a good indicator of other stupid things. For instance, we ‘discovered’ that our new seedling nursery was right under the eaves of the outdoor kitchen. The eaves concentrated the downpour right into a couple of the seedling trays, washing them out. Most of the trays were spared this treatment and did not get washed out. We’ll have to wait and see if the seedlings bounce back from their punishment.

Another stupid thing involved rice. We’ve been storing our sacks of unmilled rice in the carport, fearing that the humidity of the storage room under the house would encourage mold. The dozen sacks of rice were right in the path of the storm, so the first thing I did was throw them into the cab of the truck. Problem solved … for the moment. Tomorrow we’ll be drying the rice in the sun and re-sacking it, but where to store the stuff is still a problem. We also discovered the low spots in the drive and the yard, and what sort of stuff – like clothes racks, the worm bin and cat food bowls – tend to fly away in heavy winds. I still haven’t been able to find the lid for the duck-food bin.

The rice was unphased by the wind, rain and even hail. Now we just need to keep the geese out of the stuff before they nibble it up.

Speaking of rice, it was fun to watch the stuff bending in the wind but not breaking. As opposed to the pretty but pitiful rows of corn, the rice just laughed at the storm, said “bring it on!” and enjoyed the shower. I’d drained the rice paddies over the weekend to confuse the weeds and encourage the roots to grow strong as they dug down deep into the soil for a drink, but the storm had other ideas. The ducks were happy to see their swimming pool-larder refilled and wasted no time nosing about in the mud. (The geese were also curious, but they eat rice plants and are not encouraged to join the fun.)

Mainly, the place weathered the, umm, weather quite well. The ferocity of the wind and the clatter of hail beating against the shutters suggested the worst, but most of the plants and all of the animals stood up to the elements just fine – literally.

The wind was too much for the corn, but we'll stake them back up in the morning and see how they do.

Of course, the corn was knocked down. It might be that corn should just not be planted between December and June in these parts. It grows well enough, if you have irrigation, but this is the third wind storm in a month and it’s knocked the stuff over every time. If we knew which direction the winds would come from, we could plant against a windbreak, I suppose, but the cyclonic tendency of the winds make it impossible to guess from where the gusts will come.

Some of the older cassava plants were knocked over, but that’s no drama. I pulled up the tubers for breakfast tomorrow (and food for chickens, ducks and fish) and we’ll just replant some of the stakes and start a new crop. Once the “palm palisade” strip grows up along that section – made up of rattan, dwarf coconuts, betel and sugar palms – it should form a decent windbreak, and that section will better handle future northerlies. To that end, the annual beds to the leeward side of the strip did pretty well.

This papaya will survive, but it was battered pretty well by the storm. Good thing we've planted dozens of them, with more to come.

A lot of the papayas were damaged, partly by the hail, but not terminally. They should bounce back. The papayas in the agroforest area were well protected by the orchard next door and the tree strip we’re growing to the north. Their success in the face of the storm would seem to favor the argument for alternating strips of perennials with clearings of annuals. For that matter, the young grain, squash and beans in the no-till garden seemed to have been well protected by their perennial siblings growing all around.

We lost one banana, but it was a weaker “egg” banana (kluai khai) and not the more resilient local banana, which all did really well, even when carrying fat bunches of fruit. I was happily surprised to see that most of the trees we’ve planted held up really well. The Mesua ferrea alongside the pond was toppled, but we had cheated with that one and bought an already mature tree from the market. Some of the bigger-leafed trees were really chopped up by the hail, and we lost a lot of the stunning violet and white flowers from the crape myrtle. But in general, the trees held against the storm.

Our visiting permaculturists, Les Anwyl was right when he said that storms like this “reinforce the benefits of tree crops and perennials, especially ones with underground tubers.” Biodiversity is not only good for our non-human allies, it’s a farmer’s hedge against calamity.

This toppled banana plant is an "egg" banana (kluai kai), a kind that has not been very successful here. The more common local banana (kluai nam wa) fared better.

This Mesua ferrea tree was bought from the market as a mature tree and transplanted. It's never been very resilient against strong winds. In general, it's best to grow from seed or young seedlings, but these are extremely slow-growing trees.

This cassava was knocked down, but no worries. I dug up the tubers and we'll make pancakes tomorrow! The ducks, chickens and fish will appreciate the leftovers.

These papaya were protected by the agroforest strip and the adjacent orchard. The grain and other seedlings underneath also seemed to survive the storm pretty well.