It is hot here in Arizona!!  It’s been up to 110 degrees with the lows in the high 80′s and low 90′s!  This heat is not making homesteading very easy.

My poor chickens must be miserable outside.  I am doing everything I can to make them as comfortable as possible.  Every night I freeze plastic containers full of water and place them inside their coop in the morning.  The girls have been loving this.  Whenever I check on them, they are cuddled right up next to those icy bottles.  In the hottest parts of the day, I turn on one of those stand misters you hook up to a hose.  Both girls move from their ice bottles over to the mister to cool off.  It is hilarious watching them play in the “sprinklers.”

Since it has been so hot, we haven’t been able to clear our garden beds out as fast as we had hoped.  I started the Jackolantern pumpkin seeds in trays to give us a little extra time.  Unfortunately, they haven’t faired so well.  The heat wave nearly fried the seedlings.  If that wasn’t enough, my chickens found them and devoured half of the seedlings.  Mama hen is not happy about that one.  My seed order got lost in the mail, so my Lumina and Jack Be Little pumpkins will not be this season.  So, the pumpkin patch I had been envisioning has been wittled down to a whole 3 seedlings, if they continue to survive the chickens and the heat.  I guess that will give us enough pumpkins for Halloween.

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