When I was last at the farms in February, everyone was talking about the rain that hadn’t come.
The air was dusty, the leaves were tired, and irrigation lines wound like veins through the red soil. Komal and Akshay at Mooleh Manay and Pavan at Papakuchi (Venkids Valley) were preparing for another dry year digging pits, mulching, and trying to coax their young coffee trees into flower.
Now, the same hills are drenched. It hasn’t stopped raining for weeks. In some areas, like the Sirangalli community, rainfall has crossed 250 inches. Streams that once whispered now roar. The soil squelches underfoot, and the scent of overripe coffee hangs thick in the air… sweet, heavy, a little sad.
The first harvest this year wasn’t really a harvest. It was triage, removing rotting cherries to save what could still ripen. Workers moved slowly, hands red with pulp, separating good fruit from bad, hopeful from lost. Akshay said quietly, “We pick what we can, so the rest has a chance.”
Across farms, people are improvising. At Mooleh Manay, a new cherry-sorting machine has become essential, helping to separate healthy cherries from those that can’t be saved. It’s one small response to too much water, too much fruit, too much uncertainty. Farmers talk now not about yield but about salvage, about taste, about how to regain sweetness lost to the endless rain.
This is what climate-smart agriculture looks like in practice. It’s not a neat system or a scientific manual, but daily acts of care and adjustment. The same hands that prune, weed, and pick must now read the clouds, the soil, the silence between rains.
The strength of shade-grown agroforestry is visible everywhere. The older trees under canopies of fig, jackfruit, and dadup are still holding firm. Their soil is cooler, their roots deeper. It’s a reminder that regenerative coffee isn’t just a philosophy; it’s a survival strategy.
Globally, coffee is in flux. In Brazil, heat and drought have already begun to distort flowering. The Coffee C price has surged, reflecting scarcity as much as speculation. Vietnam’s erratic rainfall adds to the instability. Everywhere, farmers are trying to adapt to a world where the seasons no longer play by the rules.
Even the plants feel the confusion. Coffee thrives on steady rhythm a little stress, then rest, then fruit. It needs just enough hardship to build flavour. But too much rain, too little sun, and it loses its edge, its sweetness diluted by excess. Coffee, like people, needs the right kind of struggle. A bit of stress builds character. Too much, and it breaks you.
Walking through the sodden blocks this year, I thought about that balance how easily it tips, and how much of farming is learning to live at its edge. You can plan, prepare, and pray, but the final say always belongs to the weather.
And yet, there’s something profoundly human about the persistence I saw. The laughter under leaking tarpaulins. The smell of firewood and fermenting fruit. The quiet pride when a batch of fermented cherries finally tastes right.
We talk about specialty coffee in terms of flavour notes and cup scores, but this year, the flavour is resilience. It’s what happens when the skies forget the script, and farmers write their own, one harvest at a time.
Our seasonal blend this year, OM is born from climate chaos, crafted with intention.
It’s a reminder to pause, breathe and find harmony this season.