18 May 2026 · Arun Chaiyaporn
August looks comfortable. December is when the knives stop.
Families who tap rubber in Ra-ngae and the districts around it often tell us the same thing in August. The cup lump has been selling, the middleman has paid within a few days, and the household account looks settled. By December the bark is wet, tapping days disappear, and the school costs and the pickup instalment have not disappeared with them.
Narathiwat's heavy rains come with the end of the year, not with the middle of it. A cash habit copied from a west-coast farm — saving in June for an October lull — points the reserve at the wrong months.
What the drier months are hiding
A run of tapping days puts cash in the house every week. Food, fuel, and a repair to the knife or the motorcycle are paid without strain, and a larger purchase starts to look reasonable. The purchase is often a fair one. The mistake is to treat August's closing cash as the amount that will still be there when the rains sit on the panels.
Wet bark is not tapped. A week of rain is a week without cup lump, while the middleman who paid quickly in August may also have nothing to collect. The lag was always there. It only shows when the sales stop.
The household still eats. If there is a loan instalment on the pickup or a payment into the co-op, those dates were agreed in a dry month. The rain does not move them.
A reserve aimed at the wet weeks
In a seasonal reserve plan we ask the family which weeks they actually stopped last year. We do not hand them a calendar of Thailand in general. Last year's notebook, even a thin one, is better than our guess.
The target is the bills that continued through those weeks, plus the cash floor the family will not go below — often the rice, the fuel, and the instalment. The weekly set-aside is that target divided by the drier weeks still ahead. If the weekly amount empties the house account, we lengthen the build rather than raise the pressure.
The money stays in a separate account or a labelled envelope in the house. It is not sent to us, and it is not put into a scheme. Its only job is to be there when the knives stop.
Owners who want the ordinary trading weeks written as well commission the thirteen-week cash position nearer the start of the rains, when the reserve is already standing and the remaining weeks can show the instalments one by one.