We’ve had a summer of mostly cool temperatures. So imagine it being almost September, a Monday of course and dealing with a heat wave on the farm. Heat waves are hard to deal with, but today has been extra.
It’s always constantly checking to see if the livestock is staying cool and that their waters are full. Hosing off hot pigs, pigs love getting hosed off with hot water, it’s so goofy. Our pigs happen to be very pregnant and one of them hasn’t left the barn all day so I’m dragging the hose into the barn to cool her off.
Then we have a barn cat that’s about ready to drop kittens, because we haven’t been able to find a reasonably priced place to spay cats yet. Most of the low cost spay places closed within the last couple years. Now we’ll have more cats to spay. So I’ve been checking on her like crazy, crawling under the porch to see if she’s ok.
Our old school house always has flies, but this morning we had an excessive amount of flies in our youngest daughters’ room and so I had to take care of them with a fly spray, and I washed all of their sheets while I was cleaning their room from the random fly infestation.
I had the girls all hanging out in our basement, the coolest place in the house, literally. We don’t have air conditioning in the northwoods, but we do have a fully furnished room in the basement for us to hide from the very occasional heat wave. Then I eventually convinced the toddlers to nap, just in time for the UPS guy to stop to pick up a package. Cue the chorus of dogs, 2 of them ended up outside with me greeting the UPS guy with their lack of manners.
Then it was time to hose off the pigs again and head to the garden to grab some produce for a sheet pan dinner. My husband was home from work at this point, so he grabbed some red onions and I picked some cherry tomatoes. We sliced up some zucchini and potatoes from the garden and tossed them with our onions and tomatoes and some slices of sausage with some olive oil and seasonings. Threw the sheet pans in the oven and went back to retreat in the basement.
I should probably check on the animals again. The heatwave is almost over and I’m so ready to sleep. I don’t know how farmers down south survive the heat. I love summer, but I’ll take days in the 60’s and 70’s over this any day.
Written by, Brittany, the geek behind the blog. Sharing tips and stories from the trenches on navigating life homeschooling and homesteading as a stay at home mom.