Panting, Wallering, and Salivation

Turnip Day traditions, the latest in sackcloth fashion, and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation breakdown

A nice cool waller tucked in under falling elderberries aka swine milkshake

The Dog Days are here, and we are swallowed in their sweltering maw. Deep in summer, there’s some things I look forward to: cicada song and corn smut tacos, baskets full of tomatoes hot from the sun and the permission I give myself to occasionally nap in the middle of a day spent otherwise toiling. When I can’t take rest this way, sometimes I’ll write. It’s usually relaxing enough, but today is different. The office where I typically write these things is in the attic of our small, off-grid straw bale home. Like most of the Midwest, we are currently sizzling under the weight of that climatic panini press known as a “heat dome”. Every year it seems we are treated to new terminology used to express extreme weather conditions. First there was the polar vortex, then the atmospheric river, but lately it seems the trend has moved towards heat domes. Yay.

A heat dome is a stubborn mass of hot ocean air trapped under a lid of high pressure. Disrupted or weakened jet streams can not easily displace it, and it just sits on top of us like  a hot, flabby brood sow, panting her spicy turnip breath upon us. Today will be our third consecutive triple digit day here at the farmstead, and my attic office space is fairly uninhabitable. Therefore I am sitting on a bucket in our shaded farm stand building, my computer rocking on top of a milk crate resting precariously on a half-full cardboard box of bulk toilet paper, bringing all the hot news to your inbox.

Despite what you may have been told, we don’t lead this laborous and rustic existence on account of a mere persecution complex. It’s also because we’re poor! We don’t have air-conditioning at our place on account of our smaller sized solar electrical system , and to a degree, (about a hundred and two, actually) I am fine with this. If the nights are sufficiently cool we can usher in the fresh evening air. Our straw bale walls sealed with earthen plaster insulate us from the brunt of the heat during daylight hours, and the considerable thermal mass of all that plaster, combined with the ground contact floor and the northern side of our house which is dug below grade holds onto much of the cool air we can trap, like a battery for temperature. The flipside of this, of course is that after weeks of hot weather, the “battery” flips to holding onto heat, and we can feel waves of unsettling warmth emanate from the plaster at night; a change in direction for the thermal flywheel. And so while I’ll take my risk of heat stroke when I’m out tending to the gardens and livestock, I simply refuse to slump over at my desk while I write this newsletter.

It could happen after all. Of all the new-to-me meteorological and thermodynamic terms I’ve been treated to these past few years, Wet-bulb temperature (WBT) is perhaps the second most frightening. I was intending to only give today’s almanac a light sprinkling of doom, but you know what, I’m sweating in a shed, sitting on a bucket. In fact, if you’re enjoying this piece from within the confines of air-conditioned space, and it’s hot as Hades out there, I’m going to offer a little challenge: go outside to read it. I’ll wait here.

Wet-bulb temperature: it sounds kinda gross, and it doesn’t get any better when you learn more about it. The wet-bulb temperature is defined as the temperature of a mass of air cooled to saturation (100% relative humidity) by the evaporation of water into it, with the latent heat supplied by the air itself. It is the lowest temperature that can be reached under current ambient conditions by the evaporation of water only. In other words, the biological animal body, which ordinarily uses evaporative cooling in the form of perspiration in humans and horses, and panting, wallering and salivation in other mammals, cannot keep up with demands of high wet-bulb readings. A wet bulb reading of above 35 degrees Celsius can lead to death after prolonged exposure, even in cases of healthy folks. Being nude and near a fan does nothing in these circumstances, which is admittedly one of my main personal strategies. Bathing in cool water and spending time in conditioned spaces are the only remedy for this level of extreme heat and humidity. High wet bulb temps have been indicated in a handful of climate health and fatality events in Europe, Russia, India, and the Middle East. Wet bulb is an accepted measurement. In South Carolina, state law requires that outdoor school events be canceled in dangerous heat, determined by wet-bulb measurements. Combine a high wet bulb day with drought and toss in a bit of wildfire haze, and you might just feel like donning sackcloth and ashes and calling for pentinence …or maybe you’ll just stay in the AC. On that note, you can go back inside now.

These are the dog days of summer, so called in our hemisphere due to the prominent heliacal rising of the Sirius star system (colloquially the dog star). In folklore, it is associated with drought, fever, bad luck, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, and mad dogs. This list reads more factual than mythological to me with the exception of the mad dogs. Sometimes I have to check to make sure our dogs aren’t dead on account of the lethargy, but they haven’t seem to have lost their minds. In antiquity, this astrological period was blamed for sour wine, poor results from purging and bloodletting, and an increase in crime. Luckily we’re past such superstition! In a slightly more modern context, a widely held proverb in the US once contended:

Dog days bright and clear

Indicate a good year;

But when accompanied by rain,

We hope for better times in vain

This makes natural sense, as bacterial and fungal blights do thrive in hot wet weather. As for sour wine, my ferments also don’t turn out well when it’s really very hot. I can see the correlation between heat and the shortened temper that might lead to violent crime, having yelled at a housecat for breathing on me too much earlier today. And while I will not offer medical advice, I’m generally suspicious of bloodletting and purging and can see how summer heat may exacerbate the negative effects of these practices. So you’ve heard it first: the official Fox Holler Almanac opinion is that the dog days of summer are real. But I’d be more worried about the wet-bulb temperature, in this, the hottest global temperature month ever recorded.

That said, now is the customary time to plant fall crops, like turnip, rutabaga, daikon radish, and maybe carrot (the one vegetable my boy will always eat without negotiation is the one we never manage to grow very well). I’m pretty sure I’ve said this here before, but the old adage in Missouri is “The 25th of July, sow your turnips, wet or dry”. In fact, July 25th was declared Turnip Day by Harry Truman, during  the particularly rancorous congressional session of 1948. The GOP dominated Congress would not consider any of Truman’s priorities, so regardless of the conditions, Truman tossed out a lot of seeds in the form of initiatives, none of which sprouted. You can toss a lot of ideas out there and get few to take root, but turnips, it turns out, have a better shot.

We like to sprinkle turnip seed everywhere on Turnip Day. We sow it under the cornstalks, we sow it in any of our sparse garden beds, and we even rake it out into thin or bare patches in the pasture. By dispersing a couple pounds of seed every year, the chances are pretty good we’ll still have more turnips than we want, even if our other crops are a total failure, which is where the pigs come in. But I’m not going to get to deep on turnips for now. Just plant them if you haven’t already, and we’ll circle back to the subject in the cooler, shorter days nearer to Halloween.

And so the Dog Days are here. Astrologically speaking, we exit this period on August 11th, but whether or not the heat breaks by then is anyone’s guess. It could be that days like this spread into months, or years in some places, as the planet inexorably heats. So, in lieu of air conditioning, we have shade trees, 12 volt solar powered fans, an outdoor kitchen that keeps cooking and processing heat out of the house, and nice, deep swimming hole. This time of year, the pond will get a little tepid, or even soup-like on the top few feet, but the resourceful swimmer can kick up a current of colder water from the bottom to help cool down quickly. And with all the cows and fresh fruit, a batch of home-made ice cream is always within reach for getting the internals organs good and frosty. 

In this heat, the gardens and even the young trees can use a good drink if they can get it. With so many ripening tomatoes we have to be careful to not overwater and cause the skins of the fruit to split. With my rain tanks at their current level, overwatering doesn’t seem to be a likely issue. While the beds of winter squash look extra sad at midday, their drooping leaves shriveled in a visual manifestation of how I’m feeling, and even the vigorous vines of tomato appear drab and disheveled on the trellis, how weather crops like long beans appear resplendent in the midst of the heat dome, growing near perceptively, twining and climbing their way 16 feet up to the peak of our hoophouse. Long beans are in the cowpea family and produce an abundant crop for us most years. At peak we will harvest around 5 pounds every other day from a couple dozen plants, so long as they are watered adequately. Sometimes known as “Yard Long Beans” they’re pretty long, but more like 18 inches. 

Long beans: a summer staple at the farmstead

Out in the field, the goats are out foraging in the shade of old fencerows and the cows linger beneath trees and swat flies. We are currently running two herds of swine; one group has been contracted to mix barn compost and biochar together out near our winter cattle barn, the other is lined up against our staple crops planting, ready to receive daily piles of smartweed, grass, and yes, pigweed, that we pull from the rich earth surrounding beds of sweet potatoes and mounds of winter squash. Our contractual agreement with both groups of hogs is that they will receive a comfortable and shady place to sleep and a cool mudhole to waller in. In “regenerative agriculture” leaving soils without vegetation or otherwise denuded and unmulched is much derided, and while this practice is generally correct, it is of vital importance to the nature of pigs that they can cool down in wallers, and that chickens can regularly groom for parasites and relax in dustbaths. We have even situated a large, broken trampoline destined for the landfill over the top of a pig waller as a sort of sun shelter, and this fudge colored swine spa almost has me intrigued enough to take a quick roll myself whenever I get to this part of my mid-day chores. The pigs, however, don’t appear willing to share, as if they too have shortened tempers as a result of these dog days. 

Instead I take a few moments to sit down on yet another overturned bucket in the nearby tree shade where little stirs but the mad, biting flies. Unscrewing the squeaky cap of my water bottle and taking the last remaining gulp, my curiosity turns to wet bulb temperature again. I wouldn’t actually die out here, would I? Even living rustically as we do, my mom is two miles away and has central air. If someone found me, we could make it. Also, we have ice cream. 

Affluence has a way of insulating people from extremes. In places like the Southwest, where the heat has been blazing for weeks now, scaled human habitation has never been possible without the advent of air-conditioning, which ironically comprises a significant contribution to atmospheric carbon and other greenhouse gases. I question if these populations feel any major physiological difference between 95 degree weather and 105 or even 115 degree weather. Of course, it is the less-resourced global populations that bear the brunt of dangerous temperatures. When dangerous wet-bulb readings occur in Bangladesh, air-conditioning, or even cool water for bathing is in short supply. Cooling centers that serve these populations are one way to deal with the danger, but I do question whether or not we here in the affluent Western world should be made to share the almost miraculous technology that is air-conditiong a bit more. Admittedly, the concept of having to share use of technologies with a high energy footprint for the good of many instead of private ownership and individual consumption is, not popular here. Just check out Amtrak…

And so maybe the Dog Days will cease to end in some future. Or, things can flip in a different direction. 

She’s not dead, just resting.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (abbreviated AMOC) is an influential ocean current that circulates water from north to south and back again throughout the Atlantic ocean. It is not only a key component in maintaining relatively stable weather out and along the Atlantic, it functions in maintaining an important nutrient exchange in the ocean that supports the ecology for an enormous swath of the planet. And, if ocean temperatures reach a breaking point, it can suddenly shut down. The predicted results of a breakdown of AMOC would be… not good. Now you’re going to want to get dressed in sack cloth and head back out into the heat for this next bit.

The predicted results entail massive shifting of precipitation belts and patterns in the global south well away from established agricultural areas. The Greenland ice cap would be certain to melt quickly, causing rising sea levels along the East Coast of North America. Trapped cold water parcels could potentially develop into Ice Age like conditions in Europe. New analysis suggests that and AMOC breakdown could potentially occur between 2025 and 2095. I will grant that this new analysis is controversial, but, is your sackcloth feeling itchy?

If you’ve been reading the Almanac awhile, you know I like to sprinkle the doom with a little sweetness. Or maybe the other way around. And yes, I eat fresh peaches and home made ice cream every day. And my children have the privilege of living in a wholesome and healing natural environment, as part of a loving human community. And most of the time, I’m doing what I want to be doing, and I even have a little time left over to try and do simple things to make life better on the planet. But I don’t have enough special sauce, or even pickles, to dress up this shitburger being served to us by the 100 corporations that account for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions. Or the top twenty of those firms that account for nearly a third. Pardon my French.

It’s easy for us to other one another, or deny the heat and the grief that comes with it, or completely shut down in the face of these potentialities. Talking about climate collapse just never seems to go well, as often as I keep trying. So once again, I’m not going to end on some eloquent word of advice, or glimmer of hope. It’s too hot for that today. But for one, I don’t think a warming climate means I get to take on avocado production in 20 years… it's more likely we’ll be fighting over honey locust pods. We’ve made some choices in creating this project, to work passionately for survival, to demonstrate an alternative, and to move through the uncertain future with whatever compassion we can offer. I’m less sure about all that this week, but like we’ve been saying here after all our snappy and unkind exchanges with eachother, it must just be the heat talking. You can take off your sackcloth and go back inside.

Yours in sultry terror,

BB