The Beat Goes On

(No, not the Sonny and Cher music hit)

I should be able to hear the sound emanating from my friends farm a couple miles away. The guy should be punching holes in the rocks to create holes for the new coffee trees. That sound will be heard a couple of neighborhoods away. I was over there yesterday mowing one last area on the other side of the street which divides the property. That approximate 1 acre location will have fruit trees but we may not get them planted right away. The main focus is getting the coffee trees in the ground as it is late in the season to be planting here.

As we near the end of the year, our temperatures PLUMMET! Well, compared to your location, not so much. 🙂 Our daily high/low during the summer might be 85/70 and winter it drops to 80/65. So our daily temperature varies only about 15 degrees and during the winter that range lowers by 5 degrees. BRRR! While people laugh at that, for many of us, we feel the difference. My house has no insulation so when it gets winter I am under a blanket more.

The Big Island of Hawaii has most of the worlds climate zones. I say 11 of the 13 but there are climates and sub climates and different ways of describing the climates. Know that out island is the size of the state of Connecticut, so to have multiple climates is quite unusual. This site says 8. We are sub-topical meaning not quite tropical but we also have polar tundra where we get snow and it can occur at any time of the year. If you take a drive around the island, which can take a day, you go from one zone to another. It is not unusual for me to drive 4 miles to my little town and pass through rain in the middle of the trip, about at the same location. Because we mostly have warm weather and thunder requires warm and cold temperatures, if I hear thunder I can almost guarantee we will have a dusting of snow up on Mauna Kea. The volcano name Mauna Kea means ‘mountain’ and ‘white’ the white being the occasional snow covering. The summit has been known to have very high winds and has recorded a 191 mph gust. There was an unofficial reading over 210 mph during a hurricane.

If you watch our Kona Ironman race, you will notice that from the airport to the north (the bike route) there is no rain, no vegetation to speak of, save for a few scraggly trees. From the airport south it is fairly lush. Over by the volcano there is rain forest and next to it a desert region. Over on the island of Kauai is one of the wettest spots on earth with about an inch of rain per day average. Yet next to it is an arid desert area. It just depends upon the mountains and wind direction.

So it really is an interesting place to live.

I need to head on over to that other farm and see if I can tighten a few bolts on the mower and get a good chunk of the last acre mowed. The ‘cane grass’ over there is 8 feet tall in many spots and even my flail mower has problems with it. I am driving about a mile an hour at times so the mower doesn’t get bogged down. If I can get the thing mower now, hopefully it can be kept that way and perhaps a ground cover down so the tall grass doesn’t grow back. Time will tell.