ANH: Moisture Farms, Seasons & Harvests

[Crazedwraith]

One thing that just puzzled me about Star Wars is the conversation Luke and Uncle Owen about him staying another season before going to the Imperial Academy.

OWEN
You mean the next semester before
harvest?

LUKE
Sure, there're more than enough
droids.

OWEN
Harvest is when I need you the most.
Only one more season. This year we'll
make enough on the harvest so I'll
be able to hire some more hands. And
then you can go to the Academy next
year.

The way they talk about implies it's like crop farming. Grow all year, harvest the crops and sell them. But this is moisture farming. They have vaporators pulling water out of the air all the time and they should just be able to turn the tap on it and get whatever's been gathered at any time.

What are the seasons and harvest time they refer to? Does Tatoonine actually have a (relative) dry and wet season when the vapourators work better. When is the best time to harvest and sell water?

[RogueIce]

Wookieepedia to the rescue!

Moisture farmers maintained moisture vaporators to gather water for themselves as well as to sell to others. They also used the gathered moisture to irrigate crops, which were grown underground, sheltered from the hot sun (or suns, as is the case in the binary star system of Tatoo).

So perhaps they were also in the latter category? Beru got those veggies or whatever she was preparing from somewhere, after all.

[Simon_Jester]

It seems very likely that Tatooine would have wet and dry seasons, and that it would be a lot easier to bring the underground plant farms to 'harvest' during or shortly after the wet season.

Alternatively, Uncle Owen may have some kind of contract whereby someone comes by in a giant hover-truck or land-crawler once every six months or whatever to pick up his crop. And he "harvests" his crop immediately prior to that time, instead of harvesting tiny amounts of whatever happens to be ripe and bringing it into market every week or two.