Hotter'n Hades

“July in Texas” would serve as a wonderful subtitle for Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.  When July rolls around, it gets awfully hot around here.  It’s also dry.  On average, we get 1.92” of rain in July, making it our driest month of the year.  Many years, we get no rain at all in July – the average is only as high as it is because every once in a blue moon we get the residue of an early season tropical storm.

This year, much of the area is getting precipitation from Hurricane Alex, which slammed into the Mexican coast the last day of June and first day of July.  Much of the area, but not, of course, College Station.  There is evidently an invisible dome over our fair metropolis, which causes rain to slide off to either side of us.  It’s a big joke in our family to look at the weather forecast and say “40% chance of rain?  I hope they enjoy it over in Huntsville.”  So, there may be an occasional spot of relief, but even so, it is going to be hot and dry here for the foreseeable future.

We did our best to prepare for this year’s broiler month.  After painting for reflection, our roof now shows up on satellite photos as an obnoxiously bright white spot in the middle of our plot, as does the roof of our chicken coop.  We have added insulation to the attic.  We have applied paint to our exterior walls and trim which includes a ceramic additive with heat reflective properties.  We have cleaned our air filters and ductwork.  We are installing new weatherstripping on the front and back doors this weekend.

In short, if our air conditioning bill this month is large, the only reason will be the obvious one – we live in Texas, and it’s July.

We are also prepared for the inevitable slew of whining observations coming from our fellow inmates of this natural insane asylum – “Hot enough for ya?”  Why yes, it is, thank you very much.

We were cured forever of the impulse to engage in such ridiculous commentary ourselves by a visit to Barrington Farm, the preserved home of Anson Jones, last President of the Republic of Texas.  The farm is a living history exhibit on the grounds of Washington on the Brazos State Park, and is a wonderful example of showcasing things folk used to do which they ought to consider doing again.

We visited the farm in late June, on a humid day with temperatures in the high 90°s, and we sweated.  A lot.  However, the curators were in full period regalia, and were doing the work of 1830s farmers uncomplainingly.  The north-south alignment of the dog run in the house provided a cool breeze, and rickety chairs on the porch provided a perfect platform for doing all of the busy-work necessary when field work is next to impossible.

Stepping off the porch in any direction, the heat became close to unbearable; however, several varieties of corn towered over the landscape.  We had trouble with a few plots of sweet corn at Myrtle’s place; the Barrington Farm living history exhibit had no such problems with their field corn, some of which reached heights of 10-12’, and boasted 3-4 ears per stalk.  Clearly, decadence does not do as well in the Texas heat as do  perseverance and hard work. 

Sweet corn needs no seasoning when you cook it; field corn by contrast is usually ground into corn meal, but it can also be either parched or roasted, and with a little added flavor in the form of salt, pepper, herbs and butter, is quite surprisingly delicious in its own right.

Out by the slave quarters, an outdoor ‘kitchen’ consists of a fire pit with dutch oven under the shade of a grape arbor.  And even here, the superiority of careful planning is evident; in spite of hot coals for roasting corn and grilling meat, the breeze under the large canopy of wild grapes makes for a tolerable place under which to sit and watch the pumpkins and melons ripen.

There is no irrigation system for this farm; there are no water hoses; either they receive sufficient rain, or they have to carry water in buckets to their various fields.  Being a destination for area school children, they do have the advantage of a lot of willing volunteers for this more tedious task – when asked by a woman in hoopskirts and an old-fashioned bonnet, children who refuse point blank to pick up their own dirty laundry at home are thrilled to carry a wooden bucket full of water to keep alive heirloom varieties of vegetables which they would never willingly eat.

We intend to implement several features of early 19th century Texas farming on our own living history diorama.  Some are things we were going to do anyway – we have already established several grape arbors, and are planning on adding more areas of “live shade”, with two conjoined trumpet vine trellises on our western exposure. 

In fact, we have a gravel driveway, and we are basically cutting it in half, creating a north-south breezeway which should in time become a sprawling vine-covered sitting area.  Once growth is established here, our outdoor living space may well consist of a greater area than our indoor living space.

We also have an L-shaped grape arbor outside our south-facing living room windows.  Three of the four grape plants established here are Mustang grapes; the fourth vine is Black Spanish, a multi-purpose grape which we intend to use to raise the sugar content in our wild grape must, making our wines a little less gamey.  The fact that the vines will also shade our living room, in addition to creating a boxed-in porch area in our back yard, is just a bonus.  The chickens will enjoy it, too, given that these vines will cut their western sunlight in summer to almost nil; since grapes are deciduous, winter sunlight will continue to hit the coop.  Could this be engineered any more efficiently?

Some limits, of course, impose themselves when wild-eyed enthusiasts go hell bent for election.  We will not be putting hog pens nor a cattle barn in the back yard.  Nor will we be raising turkeys, nor guinea fowl.  Our birds are occasionally fairly squawky, but they are nothing compared to the incessant noise of guinea hens such as those who free range in the woods at Barrington Farm.

We also will not be raising cotton.  As much as we like the idea of self-reliance, we are going to have to draw the line somewhere.  We will continue to purchase textiles from other producers, at least for the foreseeable future.  We still haven’t given up on the idea of getting a goat, though, so who knows what the future may hold.  We might someday turn up wearing mohair underwear and chicken-feather pants.

But probably not.  And definitely not in July; we imagine that in addition to being itchy, the heat-retentive quality of these materials would be, ah, counterproductive.

In fact, now is as good a time as any for all gardeners, whether striving for frontier Texas style self-sufficiency or not, to review the dangers inherent in exposure to summertime heat.  As noted by the Healthwise online health encyclopedia, heat-related illnesses include:

• Heat rash (prickly heat), which occurs when the sweat ducts to the skin become blocked or swell, and cause discomfort and itching.
• Heat cramps, which occur in muscles after exercise because sweating causes the body to lose water.
• Heat edema (swelling) in the legs and hands, which can occur when you sit or stand for a long time in a hot environment.
• Heat tetany (hyperventilation and heat stress), which is usually caused by short periods of stress in a hot environment.
• Heat syncope (fainting), which occurs from low blood pressure when heat causes the blood vessels to expand (dilate) and body fluids move into the legs because of gravity.
• Heat exhaustion (heat prostration), which generally develops when a person is working or exercising in hot weather and does not drink enough liquids to replace those lost liquids.
• Heatstroke (sunstroke), which occurs when the body fails to regulate its own temperature and body temperature continues to rise, often to 105°F (40.6°C) or higher. Heatstroke is a medical emergency. Even with immediate treatment, it can be life-threatening or cause serious long-term problems.

Gardening, by definition, means working outside.  When working outside in the heat, several precautions ought to be taken:

• Work in the shade as much as possible.  Take a page from the Barrington Farm book and work on the porch or under an arbor if you can.  If you can’t, then take breaks in the shade on a regular basis.
• Drink water constantly.  If you are not having to stop on a regular basis to take a bathroom break, you are not drinking enough water.
• Avoid sport drinks, soft drinks, or any other kind of drink than water.  All the advertising slogans in the world don’t make talk about electrolytes any less fictional than it really is – what your body is lacking is not electrolytes and nutrients, it’s water.  You get all the electrolytes and nutrients you need from meal times.  Don’t let the hype fool you.
• Dress in loose-fitting and scanty clothing.  You may think “Nobody needs to see me in skimpy clothes!” and you may even be right.  But if they’ve got a problem with it, they can go inside and close their shades.  Unless you are travelling into the deep desert, uncover!  The risk of overheating is, on average, higher than the risk of a little extra sun exposure (though, naturally, don’t overdo it in the other direction; SPF 15 or so on the sunscreen!)
• Wear a hat.  We like to wet ours down and put it in the freezer; by the time it gets hot, that means it’s time for a break, after which we put on a new frozen hat.
• Pay attention to other variables – if you weigh a lot, for example, you are more prone to overheating.  If you have diabetes or heart disease, pay extra attention to heat conditions.  Age is also important – babies do not lose heat very quickly, nor do they sweat effectively; older adults also have problems with sweat regulation which prevent efficient natural body cooling.
• Alcohol is a huge no-no.  Save it for your relaxing evening after having worked yourself into the ground.  And while we are big fans of home-brewed beer or home-vinted wine… in the summer months you really ought to consider switching to fruity iced beverages like margaritas and daquiris; the water content of the ice compensates for the diuretic qualities of the alcohol, effectively reducing the chances of dehydration and also making a hangover much less likely.

Of course, Anson Jones probably never even dreamed of something like a margarita, but then, even if it is living, Barrington Farm is still history.  There are occasionally great things resulting from “Progress” and margaritas are one of them.

Keep cool, and…

Happy farming!

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