Heat on the Way — Janet Szabo

The husband and I spent all day yesterday getting ready for this coming heat wave. I mowed the yard and trimmed with the weedeater. We put grass clippings as mulch around the fruit trees, which we do every summer because they help retain moisture. The husband pounded T-posts around the garden for me and set up the sprinklers. We took the last bit of shade cloth from the roll that my friend Scott gifted me a couple of years ago and hung it up in the chicken coop:

That will give the chickens a cool(er) space to hang out. I thought about rigging up some kind of misting system, too, but that would require de-energizing the electric fence around the coop. I might just put pans of water out in the chicken yard for them to stand in. The coop has a concrete floor and has only a thin layer of pine shavings on it right now, so they can lie down on the floor to keep cool, as well.

[All of the surviving chickens appear to have recovered from their respiratory illness. The roosters were back to chasing each other around the chicken yard yesterday so they must be feeling better.]

The pigs have plenty of shade and an on-demand watering system. I’ll go out periodically and make sure they have a wallow for cooling off. The husband went to a nearby farm and got the 1000-pound feed tote filled with pig food. It sits on a pallet next to the Piggy Palace. He extended the electric fence so that it goes around the tote, too, to discourage any curious bears.

The tomatoes and zucchini, which were already looking really good, will probably be amazing after a week of this heat.

We don’t have AC, but our house is well insulated and stays 10-15 degrees cooler than outside. As long as I keep the shades drawn upstairs, it’s usually cool enough that we can sleep with just a box fan running.

This will be a good week to spend some time in the old garage working on sewing machines. It’s nice and cool in there. I’ve got three machines in particular that I would like to get cleaned up and running.

I’ve been chipping away at my current quilting project. The blocks are not difficult to put together, but they are based on a 5 x 5 grid—25 squares measuring 2-1/2” each—and some of the 2-1/2” squares are half-square triangles and hourglass units. I have to make all the units, first, then sew them into a block. I’ve got the Janome set up with Diagonal Seam Tape for making the units, and Vittorio, my Necchi, set up for sewing the blocks together. I found that trying to chain piece multiple blocks was too confusing, so I gather all the pieces for one block and make one block at a time. One block takes about 30 minutes to make, which provides a nice sewing break. If I do the size quilt I envision, I’ll need 42 blocks plus sashing and cornerstones. I’ve made nine blocks so far.

Huckleberries should be ready to pick soon. I have been waging an ongoing battle here in an attempt to keep the huckleberry bushes on our property from being destroyed. We had a patch up on the north corner of our property, but part of that area got cleaned out last summer to provide better access to the easement for our neighbor’s horse trailer, and there went those bushes. There is another patch by the woodshed, but the husband got a bit enthusiastic with the backhoe a few months ago and bulldozed some of the bushes into oblivion. (To be fair, huckleberries are not high on his list of priorities.) Yesterday, he was cleaning up some overgrown grassy areas with the brush mower. When I saw him heading for that huckleberry patch by the woodshed—or what’s left of it—I went and stood over one of the bushes. I felt like one of those environmentalists chained to a tree to keep it from being cut down, LOL. I’m going to have to lay in a supply of orange flags and mark all of the bushes so they have a fighting chance.