Monday, June 15, 2009

heat

We're officially into summer now. It's right on top of us, and intends to stay awhile. No more cool mornings. No more mild, 75 degree afternoons. We're done with all that. Now it's days hovering in the upper nineties, nights not cooling much below 80, and no end in sight. This has drastically slowed the pace of farm work. Just this week, our work policy has shifted to:

Do everything as early in the day as possible, or as late in the evening as possible. Sit very still between the hours of 3pm and 6pm. Or, use these hours to run errands and enjoy the air conditioning.

It must be this way.

This is inconvenient, for sure. We still have outdoor projects to complete. We have a full-size chicken coop to build and a poultry yard to fence. You don't get much done when you only have a few hours to work. But it beats killing ourselves. The unintended upside to this method of working is that we enjoy quite a bit of forced downtime that we would never normally allow ourselves. We spend the afternoons talking, reading, practicing fiddle or guitar, or sitting under a big shade tree shooting BB's at cans. The sweating is awful, but the relaxation is pretty great. I still pine for cooler weather, but for now I'll take this unexpected gift of summer. When the chill does return to the air, there will be no rest.

1 comment:

  1. What a wonderful perspective to have about the heat of summer! My favorite time to work outside is very early morning before the rest of the world is out and about.

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