Is it hot enough for you?

The thermometer climbed to 108F for the scond day in a row today. The Pacific Northwest is apparently experiencing a heatwave unlike anything its experienced ever before, not since records were first taken. That makes doing a lot of the work around the place almost unbearably difficult. It also means that we have changed to night time irrigation in an effort to reduce the amout of evaporation happening and thus get more value out of the process.

I feel sorry for the contractors working on the Milk Barn, although they are here at 6.30am and gone by 3.00pm just as the temperature hits 100. They have made excellent progress so far. the new floor slab has been poured and all of the drain plumbing is now in place. Next will be the framing inside and then they will be running the electrical and sink plumbing through the walls. Everything so far looks really good.

I've started to clean out the main loafing barn as well as the jugs, in preparation for the lambing at the end of the year. All the jugs are empty now and I'll need to put some lime down to clear up anything nasty. In a month or two I will lay some straw and everything there will be ready to go. I might be able to do some work on the other end of the barn after that and get it ready for the lambs as a small nursery.

UPDATE: Overnight (29th/30th July) we lost one of our ewes due to the heat. I have been reading that a lot of northwest farmers have lost livestock due to the oppressive heat in the last week. We consider ourselves fortunate that we have plenty of undercover areas and the sheep have access to plenty of fresh water. Unfortunately sometimes you have to take the bad with the good and that's certainly the case when an animal dies. RIP #1134.