Field Notes
Even the heat-loving plants, peppers and tomatoes and squash, are not all that happy with a 100-plus degree heat index.
Without much rain we end up irrigating heavily, and trying to harvest and do field work early in the morning before the heat really takes hold. This weather decreases the success rate of transplants considerably, which is the thing most people learn the expensive way: a transplant that would have shrugged in May will sit down and die in late June. If you are putting anything in the ground right now, do it in the evening and water it in, deeply.
It alters all sorts of to-do lists, because the window where the weather is conducive to most tasks shrinks to almost nothing. Even with these being the longest days of the year, it feels like we are limited to winter working hours.
I have always prided myself on my ability to suffer, due to some sort of Sisyphean complex. Minorly masochistic, I have always enjoyed hard physical labor, the constant problem solving and improvisational nature of farming.
I see that joy for physical, mental and emotional pain fade, though, as the years go on and especially in the heat. Even when I am enjoying a physically demanding task, or sometimes just harvesting vegetables, there seems to be a compounding effect as the relentless heat and sun and stress tax the body and the mind.
Since moving down here I have fantasized about taking the month of July off. Put half the farm in winter squash and sweet potatoes, tarp the other half, and head back up north to Lake Superior to hike and camp and swim and sail, and reset before the grind of fall planting and harvest and winter prep.
Instead I take more frequent, shorter trips. Mini-escapes, mini-resets, more time getting on or near or under water closer to home, and time playing with wood, which is my happy place.
If your garden looks like it is sulking right now, it probably is, and so are you. Water early, plant in the evening, and go get in some water yourself.