As this article points out, the temperature of the Pacific has cooled, signaling the end of the El Niño part of the cycle; experts say there is a 75% chance of a La Niña pattern forming by the end of 2016. The Midwest is now experiencing an early spike in temperatures--as farmers deal with the heat, they can be thankful things have changed from the "good old days."
*** Dealing with Heat Before Digital Tech and Before Air Con
For our Fourth of July family
gathering on the farm, we set up the barbecue in the corn crib alley. Must be
the concrete floors or the way air flows through the old grain storage
structure, but it felt like refrigeration compared to the 100 degrees in the
sun. “Always been the coolest building on the farm,” Dad said. He pointed
to the nearby house, now air-conditioned and filled with his grandkids and great-grandkids. “It used to have a screened porch on the west side, shaded by
trees. In the 30s we could survive the heat by sleeping there. Other families I
knew slept in their yards just trying to catch a breeze.”
 |
| (oldworldwisconsin.wisconsininhistory.org) |
This year’s Big Heat has
Midwest farmers worried about crop production and shifting weather patterns. It
also brings out stories of ice houses, cool basements, and survival in the
pre-AC era. Records are falling, but many still use the 1930s as the example of
iconic heat. Farm work had to continue even in the dust and ruin of the
Depression Era droughts. Dad was a young witness: “Old Clyde told me they were
threshing oats on a beastly hot day, when one of their work horses suddenly
shivered a few times, buckled at the knees, and collapsed to the ground. Heat
killed him.”
Occasionally, farmers bought
ice blocks from the ice house in town, but most would cool milk, water, and
maybe homemade beer in well pits or storm cellars. Dad remembers, “Farmers
might use those thick old crockery jugs to take water out to the fields. They’d
wrap wet burlap around the jar and place it in the shade of an oat shock to
keep the water drinkable.”
Members of my generation also
knew old timers with peculiar techniques. We baled hay for a farmer who wore
flannel shirts and pants tied with baling twine at the cuffs to “keep out the
heat and help produce sweat that would cool by evaporation.” A few others
wore long underwear through most of the summer heat. They were also the
characters most likely to spin the heat-induced yarns. “Mighty warm in the
barn yesterday. Old Bossy’s udder was so hot I had to use pot holders
to milk her, and she only produced evaporated milk anyway.”
Some of the true stories were
about as strange as the whoppers. Dad told us what happened to a farmer one hot
summer night. “Myron’s father took the horse out to cultivate late at night
because the daytime heat was too severe. He sat on the undulating seat
behind the horse, above the waist-high corn, a full moon streaming down on the
tops of the corn stalks. The wind rippled along the rows, producing a wave
effect in the light, and Myron’s father became moon sick. Nausea got him
and he had to quit for the night.”
Air-conditioned tractor cabs
and climate-controlled barns have changed farming during the dog days of summer. When
I was a kid working the fields, we’d try to adjust the canvas umbrella strapped
to the tractor seat as we sipped ice water from thermos jugs. During chore
time in the late afternoon heat, we’d throw bales from stifling haymows or maybe
climb into a claustrophobic grain bin to shovel shelled corn into feed buckets.
When I was even younger, we had
a small chicken coop near the barn, and in the summer it featured the rank
smell of damp feathers, downy fluff hovering in the humid air, and hens clucking
lethargically if at all. Maybe the
heat’s getting to me, but I’d swear that a few of the eggs they laid during
those summer hot spells came out hard-boiled and ready to eat. Must be
time for a cool change. by dan gogerty
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