(I swear I have not left the house for days, except to go into some other air conditioned building or vehicle, and it took a special effort to take this photo of my chickens.)
During the beginning of the heatwave, I asked my husband Dan to put the air conditioner in the window of the living room. He outright refused, stating that we hadn’t needed it in the past two years and that it weighs over 100 pounds – ‘just wait a day, wait one day, and everything will be fine’.
Everything was so not fine.
Since the thing was too heavy for me to lift, I started looking wide for any random manly-man to heft it into place. Not that there aren’t any other manly-men around the farm, but they are darn hard to pin down when you need one.
(Anyone recognize this manly-man? If so - congratulations - you are my age.)
I mentioned that fact to one of our (manly-man) friends who has more than one a/c unit in his home.
Didn’t get around to relating the great tale of, “How I got heat exhaustion that one time,” but I put a bug in his ear, so that he would ask Dan (when he saw him, later) if he had indeed turned on the cold for his wife.
There was one other card to play.
“Please,” I said, “Think of the cats.”
Within the hour, we had refreshing, cool air pouring into the house.
Not for me, oh no! For the flaccid felines stuck to the ceramic tiles in the dining room, soaking up all the coolness from the floor.
For three days, we bivouacked near the a/c unit; there was a limitation to its effectiveness due to the open-floor plan of our house. Still, it was like being on a vacation in Maine; the cats slept by it at night, and so did I.
Ours is an impressively noisy unit; it woke me periodically as it thunked, ground, and blew to counter the rising temperature.
However, it was more sleep than I would have gotten breathing in the hot, oppressive air of the second story.
Where was Dan? Upstairs, sprawled out on the bed, with two large fans on either side creating a hurricane vortex around him.
I think he slept there on principal, but that only fed my long-held suspicion that he can crash anywhere, no matter what the conditions.
Controlled humidity and a crisp breeze certainly buoy the spirit - at least until the utility bill shows up.
I have a feeling that when it does, we’ll remember why we stowed the a/c in the closet - and once again vow never to plug it in.
It may be that an actual vacation would have been more cost-effective, as well as installing a small pool.
The cows had the toughest time of it. Sure, they have shade, overhead fans, a barn with open sides, and stock tanks to dunk their heads in, but it’s not quite air conditioning, is it?
The milk weights for the herd went down 1,500 pounds a day – about 10 pounds per cow. That means we lost/lose about $500 per day for every day the temperature exceeds 90 degrees.
There’s no relief on the way, for that.
