When I hung the basil outside to dry, the temperature maxed out at 96F in our area. The basil was not done drying on that first day. I hung it over our water heater for the night, then brought it back out the next morning for another day of drying (yesterday). The outside temperature hit 101F (for our area - other local temps were a lot hotter). The smaller leaves were dry by 7:30pm but some of the larger leaves were still limp. I hung them over the water heater for the second night. The one row of larger leaves is back outside for the third day. While the rest of the leaves are pictured in a bowl, below. You can see that they are ready to be crushed/crumbled.
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| large basil leaves still drying on third day |
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| smaller basil leaves ready to be crushed |
The hens laid five eggs yesterday in the extreme heat, which is totally unusual! But I'm not gonna complain about it. I had to keep switching out frozen water bottles with the thawed ones next to their nesting boxes. In each coop, the girls have a "favorite" box and the other tends to remain unused. On a rare occasion, they will use the other box, in fact, a couple weeks ago, I found an egg right next to the thawed water bottle! Hahaha. Below are images of the "frozen" water bottles that we put in the boxes and in their pens. Plus, we change out their drinking water a couple of times per day on these super hot days.
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| small frozen water bottle next to fav laying box |
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| large bottle in pen already partially thawed |
In early July, we did try to use some makeshift swamp coolers for them, but they were unsettled by the noise and the breeze, so we went back to the frozen bottles. They will lay near it and are more calm about its presence, so that's our technique.
Another first in my limited experience. Sun Scalded Bell Peppers. I've grown bell peppers for a few years (all totaled, past and present, about 10 years). I have never encountered this in our neck of the woods of the PacNW region. I lost a considerable amount of fruit before it was even fully ripe ;(
