Is it just a really busy time of year or did everyone leave? Please take me with you-it's too hot here!! Our power went out yesterday twice and already once today, the electic company has no explaination why. I just hope it stays on today since the heat index is expected to be between 105-110. :( Have a good day, KA

-- Kathy Aldridge (beckoningwinds@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002

Answers

I expect its just as hot wherever most everyone else is! Even up here in the icebox of the country (MN) its been in the upper nineties, dew points in the seventies, for several days. I like it myself, hate the cold, but then I'm weird. I must admit we do have central AC, and I have been coming inside frequently to cool off! Electrical systems in several cities have been having problems with all the AC being used.

Try to stay cool; its supposed to be somewhat cooler here today....

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002.

I'm around, yup hot hot. I don't have the window ac unit in, but I have really great fans! Wish I could play outside more, but it really is oppressive!

-- Patty (SycamoreHollow@aol.com), July 02, 2002.

Howdy, whos forum is this? Well I'll try posting here , in hopes I won't get the brushed off. It's hot here in the smokie mountains also and I won't use my window ac cause for every $10.00 of energy I use, they need to burn 100 lbs of coal to produce our electric. I have some stay cool tips and was hoping y'all wound volunteer some also. My favorite is the local swim hole , water mellon is one of the best foods to reduce body temperture , it work well enough that it can take away a childs fever in as little as 15 minutes after eating. Just snacking on fruits all day can make the body feel more comfortable. Lemmon aid is ok but the sugar can help raise body temperture,you can notice this after the effects of drinking the cold juice wears off,then you might notice you feel hotter. All beverages with sugar will make you hotter , so will coffee cause caffine consticts the blood vessals .The natural sugar in fruit doesn't make the body hotter .Stay away from foods with added oil , tuna with oil or meats ,which have oil.Potato chips are real oily and are the worst snacks to eat on a hot day also fried food .If you need to cook , do it outside so the house doesn't heat up. I take my propane oven/stove outside in the summer.I heard of some bathing their feet in a basin of water with ice.Vent fans in the attic also help . Also keep the cat off you lap if you have a lap-cat .Put the dog outside .Pets are like mini heaters .Make sure they are comfortable also. Make sure the farm animals have fresh cool water and shade . I want to know what others without ac are doing to keep cool , cause with all I'm doing I'm still too hot.

-- SM Steve (Unreal@msn.com), July 02, 2002.

Hot and humid weather here in downeast Maine also!! What's up with this weird weather anyways?! I don't do hot very well. We have no AC either, but are getting by with three fans going most of the time. I can only work in the garden very early in the morning or after 7 P.M. but it's still humid even at those hours. We can get some relief swimming off our boat. Ocean temps here are running about 58*. Nice!!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), July 02, 2002.

Howdy back, SM Steve! Where about in the Smokies are you? Annie posts here sometimes and she's in SE TN. I'm in NW NC, not technically the Smokies but still the Appalachians! Luckily, our temps have been hovering around 80º. A little muggier than usual but not too bad. We have to go off the mountain (as they say around here) on Friday and, boy, am I dreading it!!

My tip for keeping the house cool (we live in an old farmhouse built in 1916) is to close up the house during the hot part of the day. Keep the doors closed and pull the curtains. In the mornings and evenings (and all night if you can) open everything back up. This is our fourth summer here and I feel like I've finally learned how to "operate" the house.

Hey, Kathy! Seems like everyone is incredibly busy right now, doesn't it? We are, too, but I still check-in often and have been missing the normal traffic on these forums, also.

-- Bren (wayoutfarm@skybest.com), July 02, 2002.

Hi Steve. Good tips, I didn't know that about the watermelon. Is it just processed sugers? I mean fruit..

It's hot here true, but my place is in a hollow so the breeze blows through, fairly concentrated. I open all the windows at night and use the attic fan to draw in cool air. Then rotate drawing the blinds during the day, it's always much cooler in the house. My barn is even cooler! I have shade trees on the west side as it's that late afternoon sun that really heats everything up. I do have a window unit, but as I said haven't used it yet. The other day when it was terrible we went caving, but swimming is good!

-- Patty (SycamoreHollow@aol.com), July 02, 2002.

Ha Bren! Guess we were posting at the same time! Marcia, you keep making me jealous!!! :-)

-- Patty (SycamoreHollow@aol.com), July 02, 2002.

I just checked the thermometer and in the shade it's reading 98! For a former WI gal this is just too dang hot. I had to go to town today for feed and groceries-boy all that concrete & pavement must have raised the temp by another 10 degrees. I'm going to wait until after dark to unload all the feed although it's only supposed to go down to 74 tonight.:( We are getting really dry here too, we haven't had much more than a sprinkle for almost 2 weeks. It will cloud up, thunder and then nothing. I keep counting the days until fall. I love that crisp air and the way the air smells when it turns colder. I heard from my son yesterday, he will be graduating from college next May so I'll be travelling to International Falls,MN for the ceremony, I can't wait! Have a good night and stay cool.

-- Kathy Aldridge (beckoningwinds@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002.

Welcome Steve, sorry I forgot to add that to my post above. Just jump right in,this is a good group of folks. I'm in south central KY.

-- Kathy Aldridge (beckoningwinds@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002.

Patty, great minds think alike, right?? Heehee Another tip is to not cook in the house. We finally bought a gas grill and cook on it just about every eevening. It's amazing how much cooler it stays in the house! We're planning on building a summer kitchen some year (or decade....) :o)

-- Bren (wayoutfarm@skybest.com), July 02, 2002.

I was mentioning the same thing to Kathy when she posted about the solar cooker, yup great minds!!! LOL

-- Patty (SycamoreHollow@aol.com), July 02, 2002.

I try to last as long as I can each year without turning on the central air - - this year I had to give in early when the grandkids arrived with their Mom, and the baby. I can deal with "miserable", but I can't do it to anyone else. I find that when I use the AC, I have a much lower tolerance for the heat outside.

Still and all, I'd be sick or dead without the AC so far this week. It is knocking on 100, and the air is disgustingly heavy and foul for the "country". It was hard to breathe out there.

The kids spent most of the day playing in the creek, and during the worst of the day we hopped in the truck and ran errends! !

I don't remember weather like this when I was a kid! !

-- Granny Hen (cluckin along@cs.com), July 02, 2002.

Hey there Steve!!! Are you on the Tenn. side or the NC side of the mountains? We live east of Sevierville. Glad to see ya postin on here. Welcome.

Same here with the heat you all. We just had a terrible thunderstorm pass through. Came from the east, which is real unusual. My mom lives about 10 minutes away and it poured at her house, but we hardly got a drop. sigh. But we did loose power for a couple hours. The storm was all around us. In fact it rained buckets in town and even hailed. This heat has been firing up the storms in the evening. Mostly around the mountains, just shy of our house. The air has been so heavy that we've had to do outside work in the early morning. At least it gets this old gal moving around earlier! :)

Thanks for all the tips Steve!

-- Annie (mistletoe6@earthlink.net), July 02, 2002.

Well I won't tell you how hot it is here in the desert but it has been hotter in the shade than any temps I've seen posted, dry heat but non-the-less darn near unbearable.

I agree with Bren's tips for keeping a house cool, hope to upgrade to a nice thick adobe someday, that is the best way to deal with the desert temperatures.

To add to the animal feeding thing, chickens can easily become overheated if you let them feed during the heat of the day, has to do with all that metabolism heat generated after they eat.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002.

Annie, weren't those storms something!! We had them, too, and you're right about them coming from the East. One came from there yesterday and I immediately started to "pay attention"! I didn't see any hail here at home but Gilly saw some further south.

-- Bren (wayoutfarm@skybest.com), July 02, 2002.

Granny, I vowed not to turn on the AC until July 4 but it just got too hot. I was only able to hold out until June 22. I'm afraid to see my electic bill next month.:( Last year my highest was $318 and I don't use high energy appliances, I've got those low watt fluorescent bulbs in all of the fixtures and I hang my clothes out. We bought new appliances when we bought the farm 2 1/2 yrs ago and they had good energy ratings so I don't know how to reduce the bill any further. The central air(4ton) is 1 1/2 yrs old-lightening hit the original so the insurance replaced that. How do you all keep the energy bills under control?

-- Kathy Aldridge (beckoningwinds@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002.

BC, just to continue the "who's sufferin the most" scenario.....:)

I lived in southern CA for 12 years, where it frequently got over 100 degrees, and might I say that there is no comparison in discomfort levels in said conditions and those of a humid environment of twenty degrees cooler on the thermometer. Course we couldnt breathe for the smog, but that's another story!

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), July 02, 2002.

Hey Bren, I'm outside of Townsend ,I guess your in the higher elevation than I am , I was in Jefferson N.C. by Twin Rivers in october , it's beautiful country.Patty I don't know if it's just the processed sugar only, but fresh fruits lower body temperture, I been wondering if fruit sugar would be better.Thanks for the Welcome Kathy , 5 generations ago my dads family settle in Kentucy from England ,I've only been up to Ketucky to buy goats from the cattle auction in London KY.they have on tuesdays , people were real friendly there .Granny , I've been thinking I may live longer if I just turned on that ac dial , just to keep those seals from drying out , I'll try to hold out ,last year It wasn't turned on once .I'm trying for a 2 year record . Annie we had that thunder storm also, and RAIN. It never fails to rain when I water my garden. I Guess we're neighbors . I sometimes shop in Sevierville cause they have good deals at the factory outlets .Have you ever been to the Y . BC , I lived in southeren Oregon in the late 70's , in 81' august 10th it was 120 degrees, it was like being inside an oven, an experience so unforgetable I remember the date . . There were solar flares that were responsible for that heat wave, it was 50 degress that night. Today I read that the sun had solar eruptions at 9:19 EDT Monday morning that were 30 times the diameter of the earth. My regular chickens, A mixed breed of game ,leghorn and years of rare breeds crossing don't get bothered by the heat, but I've got some jumbo cornish cross, free ranged,and they look like they're gonna keel over from heat stroke.They haven't been interested in food for the last 2 days, just water.I feel just like them and only been eating after the sun goes down. And real lite. Earthmama, you noticed it's harder to shed body heat when incased by those H2O molecules called humidity. It's kinda like walking around with a heavy duty garbage bag wrapped around the body. Suffocating. Well I guess I said Hello to everyone, Keep Cool

-- SM Steve (Unreal@msn.com), July 03, 2002.

Steve, yep, it's really beautiful up here. We're in the same county as Jefferson but we're closer to the TN/VA state lines. :o)

-- Bren (wayoutfarm@skybest.com), July 03, 2002.

A correction: it's Pigeon forge that has those factory outlets with the good deals. And the Y is the name of the swimhole where the road Y 's out to either Cades Cove or Gatlinburg.The Y is unique because you can not only meet locals but also tourist from places as far away as Italy and Germany.

-- SM Steve (Unreal@msn.com), July 03, 2002.

Hi Steve, isn't the Y also the place where they stock the river? Reason I asked was, we lived in Wears Valley for a little while and the neighbors across the drive used to go there fishing right after it was stocked. Don't believe they were suppose to! :) They were a site anyhow. Their 80 year old mom used to walk the lane to catch a ride to work, while the 5 sons stayed at home sittin on the porch or goin fishin! Guess they were so dumb afterall! I don't make it to Pigeon Forge very often, especially this time of year. Too many tourons. :)

-- Annie (mistletoe6@earthlink.net), July 03, 2002.

Annie, I make a pilgrimage to Pigeon-Forge once a year. I go when the tourarist aren't around and buisness is slow.I get to bargin the prices down from the ticket price cause they just want to make a sale.I buy name brand stuff that I would have to pay double if I had to buy it in Knoxville. And I cloths shop once a year this way and buy what I'll need til the next year, including footwear . Sounds like you had a taste of culture shock in Wears Valley. I took my 4 foot green Iguana ( a giant lizard )To swim at the Y and a forrest ranger wanted to know what I was doing with an alligator.By his accent I knew he wasn't a local.After convincing him it wasn't an alligator ,which a wildlife permit is needed to own one, he told me I needed to keep it on a leash , cause if it got loose it would propagate in the wild and it wasn't a native species and could upset the balance of the forrest.I asked him if he knew that animals can't make babies unless you have a male and a female. He scratch his head and walk away a little embarrassed. I think it's something in the drinking water.

-- SM Steve (Unreal@msn.com), July 03, 2002.