Pretending to Farm

Bar Floating

What a lovely morning!  (I have to tell you this because I have bitched and complained more than enough about the heat and I have to sound positive sometime.)  Showers blew through once again last night, lowering our waking temperatures to the seventies and still at 9 o’clock, it is only 81.  We have more storms in the forecast and, supposedly, not a day over 110 in the next week.  Be still my beating heart!

Enough of this mamby-pamby joy and gratitude.  As I watched the news last night, I saw that chickens and cattle are dying from the heat in record numbers across

California

’s central valley.  I cannot find words to say how disturbing this is to me.  For once, I am glad I am here and not there.  At least, in

Phoenix

, the powers-that-be, the infrastructure administrators, and the population in general are used to extreme heat and know how to deal with it.  No rolling blackouts here.  Most farmers/ranchers have misters and fans set up already, combined with shade structures galore.  It is a good thing, Martha. 

Meanwhile, back in the central valley, milk production is down 15%.  In the

Midwest

, the corn crop is burning up, and the wheat is failing, causing as much as an 80% decrease in yield for farmers.  (I am so glad I only pretend to farm.)  Ranchers are selling their cattle at distressed prices as they cannot afford to feed them hay and there is no forage left to graze upon. 

Can we blame all this on global warming?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that these drought events spur on the seriousness of this Decider-denied phenomenon.  Hot dry summers across the northern hemisphere reduce the ability of plants to absorb CO2 during their normal growing season. As crops shrivel, soils dry up, and wildfires burn, more carbon dioxide than ever is being unleashed into the atmosphere, twice the amount produced by fossil fuels, warming us up quicker than forecast.  Kiss your glaciers goodbye, baby.  They are going the way of the dodo.

In the meantime, I think my in-laws who live a mile from the Pacific will enjoy having ocean front property as sea levels rise 20 feet.  My mother in her downtown condo will be able to reel in dinner from her balcony, smartly saving on her grocery bill, something she really likes to do. Me?  I’m looking forward to grabbing a gondolier and going bar-floating the next time I sail to

San Diego

.  Why don’t you don your life preserver and join me?  Be careful, though, we might get, wait for it, TIPSY!

At Rope's End

Saturday		Sunday		Monday		Tuesday		Wednesday
Hi 116 Lo 92		Hi 112 Lo 90		Hi 109 Lo 89		Hi 109 Lo 90		Hi 108 Lo 89
Clear		Clear		Clear		Clear		Clear

A big part of me has had it this morning.  I try.  I truly try.  I wanted to come here; my house is beautiful; my husband has a good job; and I get to play pretend farmer and knit and spin to my heart's content.  Yesterday afternoon, however, I reached my breaking point.  The thermostat said a ghastly 115; therefore, we were sucking up our own discomfort and hosing down the animals every hour on the hour to try to offer them some relief.  Yet, somehow that was not enough for two of our chickens, the fancy cochins with feathers covering their legs and feet.  They died from the heat somewhere between five and six o’clock.  Of course, I learned this from the screams of young David who loves the chickens most of all and whose cries hurt as much or more than the deaths of Thumper, the partridge cochin rooster, and an un-named partridge cochin hen.

“He’s my second favorite rooster next to Slick,” he sobbed.

Please, if anyone, any deity, I’m not picky at this point, is listening, please don’t let anything happen to Slick.

I immediately ran out to check on the rest and found the other

cochin

on its side.  I had hose in hand and was spraying them all down.  Although she appeared gone, I thought I saw her move. 

Bring her inside, mist her down, lay her on David’s bed with the AC and ceiling fan on full blast. 

I thought I felt a heartbeat, but alas, after 15 minutes of lifting her wings to cool her and asking her please to come back, we realized her legs had stiffened and she was dead as well.  It was heartbreaking.

After the week we have just experienced (after all, it was a half hour from me writing this that we got the call about James’ death), it might sound absurd to mourn two chickens but I do nonetheless.  In the grand scheme of things, it is not so important, but when my animals, that I love and cherish, start keeling over from the ridiculous heat, it means more to me than losing two birds.  What good is it to Pretend to Farm when my animals are suffering from the climate into which we have brought them? 

David asked me recently what has made this summer so much harder than the other two we have made it through here.  Of course, from earlier posts (http://pretendingtofarm.typepad.com/pretending_to_farm/2006/07/to_the_tune_of_.html), you know the climate data shows it is hotter so far this year than any year on record and that backs me up but it is more than that.  The first summer, we had no animals other than our dogs and cats who stayed inside the majority of the time.  The second year, the sheep and goats were lambs and kids, and seemed to tolerate the heat well enough.  We had fewer chickens, no turkeys, no ducks, and no alpacas.  I walk outside and I see them all suffering and it kills me.  Why did I bring them here?  What was I thinking?  They should be grazing green rolling hills in milder climates, not walking across sand and rock to find what little shade exists in the yard. 

Unfortunately, I have no answers for this predicament.  We have at least two months left of hard summer, and until mid-October to find mild temperatures.  David has his job, and I have no other means of making a living elsewhere.  I do work on my book daily, Pretending to Farm, Instructions and Anecdotes on Leaving Life in the Suburbs and Beginning Life Anew in the Country, and I’d love to find a publisher who would be interested in such a tome, but the realist in me knows what the odds of that are. I am a sad and rudderless pretend farmer this morning.  Please, someone throw me a rope.

To the Tune of "Cheek to Cheek"

Gloating...I am gloating,

And my smirk takes over, so I can hardly speak

But I seem to find the told-you-so I seek

When the news cast tells me I was right about the heat.

Okay, I'm not Irving Berlin but I had to give it a go. 

Some of you have commiserated with my temperature-related complaints; and some might have labeled me a wimp, but whatever you decided to call me, let me share this ha, ha, and triple ha moment with you all.  Last night, as we watched the ten o'clock news, the weekend weather lady announced that June 2006 was the hottest June ever on record.  We're talking 200 years here, folks.  One more time, ha!  It wasn't just me being uber-wimp.  I have my share of unwarranted gripes but this wasn't one of them.  It was frickin' hot and now I have statistics to back me up.  Believe me, I'm going to get lots of mileage out of this one.  Oh, happy day!

This reminds me of the time I was bitten by one of the huge black ants that busy themselves with work all day here in the desert.  It hurt, a lot.  I would even venture to say the pain was excruciating.  David, being tough as nails and knowing that I am not, was unsympathetic and tried to disguise his eye rolling in response to my complaints. (It didn't work.) I knew nothing could convey the actual pain I was experiencing and had to suffer in silence.  However, a few months later we were watching the bug man on Animal Planet discuss stinging and biting insects and he rated our desert black ant just second, below the black widow spider, in severity of pain experienced by the biting/stinging victim.  I happily embraced my newly attained vindication and am still using the mileage I got from that thankfully-watched television show.  One could say I earned my domestic capital and I am smartly saving it.

On the home front, I hope you will be pleased to know I sold my kiln, ordered a new laptop, and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.  Thanks to the nice readers from whom I received words of encouragement, asking me to keep up the posts, and suggesting I use David's laptop which I am currently doing.  For those of you familiar with my glass work and thinking I am giving up, do not worry your pretty little heads about it.  I do plan on getting a new kiln someday that has more powerful heating elements to allow me to comb glass like I did in my first small kiln.  That purchase is in the future, however, as the garage is too hot for glass work (see above ) and I am happily exercising my creativity knitting and spinning in air conditioned comfort.

I have other news as well but I think I'll make you wait for it.  Let's just say Ben Afflac (not a misspelling) now lives in my backyard.

I hope this holiday weekend finds occasion for you to gloat a bit as well, maybe even spend a little of your own saved domestic capital.  You be "The Decider." Whatever you choose, enjoy your well-fought-for freedom, and pursue some happiness.  I'm sure you deserve it.

Monsoon 2006

Yesterday afternoon, we had what must be the precursor to this summer’s monsoon storms.  The sky grew dark and the wind picked up to mini-tornado speed, and we got a bare pool cover-dampening drizzle.  This will be the third year of experiencing what the local weatherman gets all apoplectic over.  In this climate of little weather change, he waits all year for it. You can almost see him jumping up and down in excitement, accompanied by noisy swoosh graphics and the announcer’s grave but dramatic narration, “Monsoon 2006!”  I remember the first year waiting expectantly for the promised event, envisioning something out of “Jumanji,” full of great deluges and hurricane-force winds, maybe even a crocodile floundering uncontrollably down the wash.  (Not really, but it fits with the pseudo-drama of the evening newscast.)  The local channel aired an hour-long special, as they do each year, on preparing for this event of Biblical proportions.  Being an avid storm lover from way back, I waited, impatient with great excitement.

At the beginning of this third summer, I thought I knew better.  Yes, we get a little rain, but nothing compared to a regular old thunderstorm on my native east coast.  The wind is the main event, sometimes accompanied by thunder (again nothing as loud as what woke me from my bed as a child) and lightning.  In this driest of places, the wind mixes with the dirt and dust, turns the sky dusky, and causes accidents on the roadways due to “brownout.”  “Micro-bursts” of wind speed have thrown furniture off the roof-top deck and deposited our neighbors’ belongings onto our back patio.  The gusts have blown open our doors (always bolted now in preparation), breaking vases and throwing pictures from their moorings, shattering their protective glass.  In my jaded eyes, this was no monsoon.  Monsoons should be wet; these are windstorms.

Today, I have a feeling that this is year to live up to its graphics.  Whether I am paying for past sins, pervasive doubts, or recent pining-for-cooler-climates, someone up there is trying to keep me on my toes.  The brief, pityingly devoid of moisture storm knocked out our well pump, leaving us low and dry.  We will obviously have to replace it; we need water, particularly in a place like this.  Rural farm life does not come without its downsides and well pumps cost a hefty chunk of change.  All I can say in my sorry-for-the-downer-of-a-mood is it’s a good thing we are just pretend farmers and receive a real paycheck from someone else. 

A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)