For 60+ Years, Kodagu Families Have Kept Handwritten Rainfall Records That Still Guide Farming Decisions

In Kodagu, rain shapes everyday decisions on coffee estates.

It is something people notice, talk about, and remember. For coffee growers in this hill district, every shower carries meaning. Every inch of rain can change how a season unfolds. And over the years, each day’s rainfall has been carefully written down, forming a record of life on the estates.

Here, rain is part of how land is understood. Growers read it through soil, slope, moisture, flowering, and the timing of each shower. These details matter so much that rainfall charts are often among the first records people ask to see when an estate changes hands.

A record kept for generations

Across Kodagu, many coffee-growing families have kept rainfall notes for decades. Some records go back to the 1950s and 60s. What began as a farming habit slowly became a family practice, passed from one generation to the next.

The process is simple. A rain gauge is checked each day, the reading is noted, and the figure is entered into a notebook. Over time, these small entries build into a long record of seasons, including wet years, dry spells, and everything in between.

Some families say they have not missed a single day of recording rain for years. The notebooks sit silently in estate homes, but they hold years of attention and care.

Sixty years of rain in Garvale

In Garvale near Madapur, the family of Pandanda Vijai Deviah has been recording rainfall for more than 60 years.

“My father started recording rainfall in 1965, and I am continuing it,” he says.

For the family, the records are still part of daily work on the estate. They help plan everything from the blossom showers in April to the main monsoon months. In coffee farming, knowing when and how much rain has fallen helps decide when to spray, when to harvest and how to manage drying.

A practice passed down in Kakkabe

At Palace Estate in Kakkabe, Apparanda Prasad Kushalappa continues a similar practice that has run through three generations.

His grandmother began recording rainfall. His uncle continued it. Today, Prasad maintains the same routine. The estate still holds records from 1963.

These notebooks are not just old pages. They help the family look back at earlier seasons and compare them with what is happening now. Over time, they reveal how rainfall patterns shift and change.

Those shifts are not just observations on paper. For coffee growers, even small variations in rainfall can have a real impact on how an estate is managed. What may seem minor to someone outside farming can make a noticeable difference in the field.

“There is a difference between getting four inches of rain and three-and-a-half inches,” says Dinesh, an agriculturist from Ponnampet.

That small gap can affect soil moisture, flowering, pest control and the timing of field work. It can decide when workers enter the estate and how the crop is managed through the season.

A history written in rainfall

Over the years, even the Coffee Board of India has referred to rainfall records kept by Kodagu’s families. In a time when weather is becoming less predictable, these long records help make sense of change.

Today, weather data mostly comes from screens and forecasts. But in Kodagu, many estates still rely on handwritten notes kept over decades. They offer a record that grows with every passing day.

Each entry in these notebooks is small on its own. A date. A number. A note about rain.

But together, they tell a longer story of coffee estates influenced by weather, of families paying attention to the land, and of knowledge passed silently across generations.

In Kodagu, rain is memory written in ink, carried forward year after year, and still shaping the way coffee is grown in these hills.

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