Hot Summer Daze Pt-2

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.

large basil leaves still drying on third day

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. 

small frozen water bottle next to fav laying box

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 ;(

Hot Summer Daze

This summer has been especially hot for the PacNW. We have had more 90°+F days already this year than I can ever remember, and it is not even August yet.  Anyways, the chickens are surviving, but certainly not thriving.  Many of them have done a "mini-molt" and we are lucky if we get more than two eggs in a day from the ten layers on these hot days.  And Molting season is coming up soon, so I'm not sure that to think at this point. 

Here are the three new pullets.  Welsummers with their combs and waddles filling in and coloring up. They are definitely noisier than the Russian Orloffs! But their disposition is just as sweet.  They loved the young spinach that I pulled up for them.

The Basil is growing well.  I'm trying my own "solar drying" technique.  Not wanting to have any of it blow away because we almost always have some amount of wind out here, no matter how hot it gets, I put a thread (on a needle of course) through the leaves near the center vein of each leaf then tried to space them out so that there's some air flow.  The first one, I didn't think it through very well. I put the larger heavy leaves on the outer ends of the thread, and being heavy, they want to all slide into the center.  The second one, I pulled the thread more taunt and there's not much sliding going on. Also those leaves are not quite as large. But, we have 90°F already today, with the winds, and the humidity is low enough (32%) helping with the drying process. I'll bring them in at twilight today because the cool down outside at night can contribute to mildew. If they are not quite done tomorrow morning, I'll put them out again to finish up the drying process. Also, I was told not to put them in the direct sunlight because it can bleach out the flavor of the basil. So there you have it. Heck's fire, it's hot enough to even dry up a batch of solar jerky, if I have a mind to!