Today is the third day of Vermont’s much vaunted “heat wave” and, quite honestly, it really hasn’t been that bad, despite what the chickens would have you believe.

That said, because they haven’t had time to gradually acclimate to the summer-like temps, we’ve been shuttling little bowls of ice water out into the yard to help keep the girls cool.

Fortunatley there’s been an afternoon shower every day to cool things off and keep the veggies from burning up.

Jen and Daphne have still been camping out downstairs for the past couple nights since it is too hot upstairs to sleep, or at least it is at the hour that Daphne goes to bed.

As you can see, Daphne is over the whole thing.

Also pictured there is an Improvia bed pad that we picked up to assist in one of our summer goals, namely doing whatever it takes to finally remove diapers completely from our lives. (I think 9 years of changing them is long enough, thank you.) It’s been a week since this project started and Daphne has had a couple accidents in bed but, in the grand scheme, that’s really not all that bad. So far. I’m also pleased to report that the bed pads worked, um, swimmingly?
Ick, sorry.
Using them should significantly reduce the laundry loads and bedmaking hassles this summer. Also, while we’re on the subject, Improvia could use a proofreading pass or two on their marketing materials…

This afternoon our plan is to head to Whale’s Tale’s Waterpark in Lincoln, NH for their annual Local Community Party happening from 5 – 7pm. Water parks are hit or miss with Daphne, but because this event is free we can take her there and test the waters, so to speak, with lower stakes. By “lower stakes” I mean we won’t drop $150 on entry tickets only to have her melt down after 20 minutes and we have to leave.
If it turns out this is something she likes doing, then they have a pretty good package deal at the event, one that would save us about $90 if we actually used them all. And given Daph’s behavior today, getting her out of the house to avoid meltdowns (for all of us), is fresh on our minds.
I say this because today is only Day 4 of her summer vacation and she’s sitting in the living room completely disregulated, alternating between shrieking, hitting herself, and hurling plastic toys.
These are the days when I’m not sure how we’ll survive the summer.

And in that, we certainly wouldn’t be the only ones…

This makes the fourth bear attack in a single month on my bees.
I’m done.
All I’m doing at this point is torturing a colony of innocent bees while feeding their honey to a wild bear, which in turn encourages him to spend more time around our farm, our chickens, and our child.
I’ll leave the whole thing in the ravaged shambles that you see here until the bees go away and/or die off, then I’ll store the pieces in a plastic bin in the garage and spend the next year debating whether I ever want to try beekeeping again…

Some pretty rough days on the farm this week. Here’s hoping things are better wherever you are.

See you tomorrow.

j.s.