Heat Wave & Stone Dust

These past few days have been hot. Hot Hot. The kind that buckles roadways and the train rails. Scary, really. So hot that I can’t be outside much later than 9:30 a.m., not venturing out again until after 9:00 p.m.

I’ve been delaying outside chores because I can’t handle the heat. I’m melting, my legs feel like they are lead-filled. I can’t lift my boots. Being held down by the thick atmosphere.

Too hot to ride after work, the boys are wet just standing in the shade.

We still have a pile of stone dust just outside the big gate into the dry paddock. It’s not going to move itself, surely, so it is not going anywhere without assistance.

After hiding inside for the evening, we ventured out in twilight to move the stone dust into the fifth stall. First, he had to empty the stall of all the waste hay, hay that comes off of each bale that I do not then feed my kids. There is a small sheet of plywood under the hay, preventing the hay from lying on the gravel. The lower layers have molded. He piles the top layer into the smaller water trough that we don’t use, the rest into the manure spreader. He empties the spreader in the field, I start shoveling stone dust into the wheel barrow.

Everybody is in, munching hay, so we can come and go through the open gate. Wheel barrow after wheel barrow, we take turns filling it and dumping into the fifth stall. I have on jeans, leather gloves, flip-flops and a wife-beater t-shirt. He says I look ‘hot’ but I know my hair and shirt are wet, my jeans are stuck to me, my belt is wet; I’m melting!

We work until after 10:00 p.m, the stall is now full to the sills. We want to get stall mats and the foundation level has to be brought up, not too high, not too low. This farm work is hard! Especially in the heat.