IT’S OFF SEASON TIME! Old Plantation Days, January 2015

What does that mean, Off Season?  That was the period of the sugarcane milling crop year where the factories shutdown to make need repairs.  Typically Off Season was in the months of January through March, and usually lasted about six weeks.

Not all companies on the island were allowed to take their off season at the same time, there was a rotation where say Pepeekeo took theirs first, then Kau took theirs after and then Honokaa took theirs next.  This was a result of C&H Sugar Refinery needed to have a constant supply of raw sugar to their processing plant in Crockett, California.  The ships needed to sail on their set schedules and pick up enough raw sugar to make the load to Crockett at the rear of San Francisco bay.

The harvesting crop year was a 24 hour a day operation and when off season came it was a 24 hour a day repair and maintenance schedule at the mills.  Almost every facet of the mill needed to be checked.  Juice pipes from the crushing plant to the boiling house needed checking and replacement, filter screens at centrifuges were replaced, mill rolls were removed from their massive mounts and resurfaced with hardened steel, and the power plant needed boiler tubes an water pumps serviced.

All over Hilo town, support business were dispatched to the mills to work on electricity connections, bearing replacements, or new equipment installation.  Some business still remain today that were intricately attached to sugarcane off season business.  MaGuire Bearing on Iolani Street and Aloha Machinery at Makaala Street are still supplying the mills now for Coffee or Macadamia Nuts rather than sugarcane.  The equipment and supplies they stock is impressive.

Off Season may have meant that midnight shifts were suspended for a while, but that did not meet some of the workers with happiness.  During the off season the harvesting field operators and truck drivers were assigned to various jobs in the factory or in the cultivation department.  It was in the cultivation department that many skilled operators found themselves behind the handle of a hoe or garden rake, being assigned the task of weeding cane rows and “covering seed” behind the planting machines.  These workers were not the most motivated to do such work and they secretly wished for a quick ending to off season so they could get back to their cranes, buggies and trucks.

Off season was another time that if you washed your vehicle and drove on the highways of the Hamakua coast that your car actually stayed clean for a few weeks.  Cause during harvest season following behind a single cane truck for a mile or two would leave your car caked in about a ¼” of mud and cane juice!  One of the sights, sounds and smells I miss of Old Plantation Days is trucks on the road and the smell of cane juice in the air!   Have a great winter everyone, and take some time off for “Off Season” around the house!