It’s too hot to mow.

[RidgeTopWVA]

Bush-hogging my fields, under the hottest of summer suns is one of my favorite jobs, way up here near the Canadian border. This is the time of year when I do most of that.

Open-field running, in 6th gear at pto-rpm, puts a nice steady breeze across my face. I have a big home-made, canvas over wood frame canopy, that keeps me in the shade. I drop my bucket to get rid of the front end bounce and improve clearance and forward visibility.

You couldn’t pay me to do that in a cab tractor with AC. I work 45-50 hours a week, in a climate controlled factory, and I cherish my outdoors time.

Here is my Bush-hogging setup:
View attachment 809787

Notice the little patch of early sweetcorn in our front yard behind the tractor. I put it there for multiple reasons (after getting permission from my wife).

1) I don’t care for lawn mowing and that corn cut our acre of lawn down to 3/4, saving me at least 15 minutes each time I mow.

2) That section of lawn was very rough, always forcing me to go real slow with my hydrostatic riding mower. It needed to be plowed, disked and re-graded and seeded anyhow.

I plowed it in April and I’ll finish the job in late August after the corn is harvested. They call that “double cropping”. That is the best time of year to plant a new lawn.

3) We had a 4-week long June drought this year. There is no better looking sweet corn (or field corn) in our town right now. I was able to nurse that little 1/4 acre thru it with a lawn sprinkler and short garden hose. The surrounding big fields got pretty parched.

1/2 hour of city water, every other late afternoon thru that stretch, did wonders. That corn is chest-high now and starting to tassel.

4) Coons usually get most of my early sweetcorn, when I plant it out back. It will be easier for me to trap them up front and what I can’t can’t catch might be taken out by vehicular road traffic.

5) My wife and kids always complain about having to go way out back to harvest the corn. Now they can pick it on their way to the mailbox.

And to think, my neighbors thought I was crazy when they seen me out there plowing up our front yard.
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That is nice looking dark soil that you have plowed.

 

[RidgeTopWVA]

Pa wouldn't get AC. No way.
If you got AC in the house you wouldn't want to work outside.

Your Pa sound's like my Dad did.

 

[cathy liebchen]

We live in Alabama and have never had A/C, it’s just something we are used to. Cold weather is much more uncomfortable

 

[WinterDeere]

Cold weather is much more uncomfortable

We will have to disagree on that. We rarely get much below 0F here, so I can't speak for our friends in Fairbanks AK, but I never mind the cold except on very windy days. You can always put more on, but there's only so much you can take off, before the neighbors complain.

 

[masscity]

The second time I mowed this year it was 90*, I don't know what the humidity was. I put the ZTR away and sat down in the shop. Finally

the energy to go to the house with the portable AC going and sat in my recliner. I sat there for 2 1/2 hours, I didn't even eat dinner.

Finally after that I had enough energy to take a shower. Even though mowing isn't hard work, I can't take the heat anymore at 76 years

old. When I was younger I never had problems with the heat.

 

[marhar]

The second time I mowed this year it was 90*, I don't know what the humidity was. I put the ZTR away and sat down in the shop. Finally

the energy to go to the house with the portable AC going and sat in my recliner. I sat there for 2 1/2 hours, I didn't even eat dinner.

Finally after that I had enough energy to take a shower. Even though mowing isn't hard work, I can't take the heat anymore at 76 years

old. When I was younger I never had problems with the heat.

I am with you. During the summertime in High School, I worked full-time on a farm doing manual labor.

 

[rScotty]

I am with you. During the summertime in High School, I worked full-time on a farm doing manual labor.

I wonder how much of that is we have gotten old and soft - and how much of that is due to it being hotter than it used to be?

 

[Smokeydog]

Agree heat is harder to take as I have gotten older. Don’t mow or make hay as much. Try to pick cooler times to mow in open station tractor.

Experimenting using substitute ice packs in pockets to help keep cool. Medicine is shipped with these ice packs plastic bags. Fishing vest holds several and short pockets. Works for a couple hours and need to take a break anyway. High humidity clothing is soaked. The dog and I seek comfort in the spring water plunge pool stock tank in the summer months.

At work used ice vests for hazmat dress out PPE.

 

[WinterDeere]

There have been a few allusions to AC making us soft, in the last several pages. What I've noticed is that we've lost some of our regional "pacing". Being a Yankee, I remember even as a kid how slow southerners would move, whenever we would drive through the southern states in the 1970's and 80's. Heck, they couldn't even talk fast in July, let alone fill up your car and check the oil at the service station.

I think this was an adapted behavior, many generations of living in this heat, without air conditioning. Nationally-syndicated television began homogenizing our speech long before air conditioning, I guess. But now that everyone lives, drives, sleeps and eats in air conditioned spaces, I see even more of these regional adaptations being lost. There's no longer such need to develop these slower inclinations, pacing yourself to beat the heat.

The other thing I remember when traveling through the south is when an old woman would say, "oh bless your soul," it wasn't a compliment. It was southern polite-speak for, "oh, you poor idiot."

 

[chim]

Age is the larger factor. At 74 I mind the heat more than I did years ago.

The last couple Summers I was in high school were spent working in an old iron casting foundry. After that it was a career in construction. No A/C for us. Projects started by either ruining good piece of farmland or a hole in the ground in the city where an old building had been demolished. As the building progressed in Summer it was a hot box because the HVAC came late in the game. Back then it was "have another salt pill and keep working".

While "Global Warming" seems all the rage, it was just as hot or hotter years ago in Lancaster County. Hot spells were worse. The below links were referenced for our locale. The highest temp recorded here was 107° on 08/07/1918. Most days in a year over 100° was 1930. Most consecutive days over 90° was June 21 - July 5 in 1966. 1930 had the most days (133) over 80°.

As my old boss said - there are about two weeks in the Summer it's too hot for man or beast, and about two weeks in the Winter that are just too cold to be outside working.

Lancaster Weather Records

www.extremeweatherwatch.com

Average Temperature in Lancaster by Year

www.extremeweatherwatch.com