The hot, hot, heat.

Hi friends. Many of you probably know this, but for those of you who don't, or who aren't aware of the excessiveness, I'm gonna let you in on something; Texas is hot. I'm not talking about dry heat, either. I am talking about hot, humid, blazing sun, drink 3 gallons of water a day and never go pee because it has all exited through your pores, type of heat. Yesterday the high was 107. The low was 82. I have never felt so dependent on air conditioning for survival. The problem with AC, however, is that your body never really adjusts to the heat and every time you step outside it's like walking into an oven and then being wrapped in a slightly damp, hot towel. Ick. A few weeks ago, when it was only in the 90's, I decided to become Zen about the whole blazing heat thing and just take it in stride. I accomplished my goal for about 3 weeks and the heat didn't bother me all that much. Then the mercury began creeping up into the 100's and my Zen attitude evaporated, much like all of the water we put out into our fields....This week I hit the wall and my positive attitude crumbled. While working the Farmer's Market on Wednesday from 2-6 (the hottest part of the day), any customer or CSA member foolish enough to greet me with a "How ya' doing" or a "hot enough for ya?" was met with a look of dismayed contempt, with just a hint of desperation buried underneath. Needless to say, my customer service was not at an all time high, but I did the best I could under the circumstances. Everyone assures me that this is an unusually hot summer and Texas isn't generally this hot until August. A fat lot of good that does for me now! But, enough complaining about the heat. It's not going anywhere until at least mid-September, so there's not much point in dwelling on it. At least that's what I try to remind myself every time I start on the downward spiral of despair over the temperature!

Let's talk about patriotism. Nothing says patriotic like a 4th of July parade. We were fortunate enough to participate in our town's parade last weekend and it was amazing. This may not surprise anyone, but small town Texas is way into America's birthday. Our farm entered a float in the parade and by my biased judgement, out of the 60 entries, we were definitely in the top 3. We managed to wow the crowd not only by having an awesome float, but also by throwing vegetables into the crowd. The sugar addled kids were generally either unenthusiastic or just plain confused by the vegetables, but the parents were way into it, often instructing their children to "go get another onion" or "grab some more peppers." Mark made the mistake of handing a melon to someone when we were stopped and all of a sudden our float was enveloped in a crowd of folks clamoring for melons. All in all, it was a blast and I think we generated a lot of community interest about the farm and hopefully attracted new customers. Cross your fingers.

Many times throughout the parade I had the almost overwhelming urge to jump off the float and snap some pictures. Turns out, our town is very patriotic. There were, of course, the obligatory American flag themed camping chairs and the older women sporting red, white and blue visors. Some people, however, went above and beyond. On one section of the parade route there was a crew of over 30 people sporting t-shirts that said 'Freedom isn't Free' on the front and 'Freedom estb. 1776' on the back. Each of them was waving at least one American flag and some of the more ambitious ones were waving two. My absolute favorite show of patriotism was a miniature poodle sporting a sequined red, white and blue tank top and a headband that had two sequined stars at the end of spiraled wires, causing the stars to shake every time the dog moved. It was awesome. I haven't felt so patriotic in a long time, possibly ever. Living in Portland for so many years made me forget that most of my fellow Americans take great pride in this country and its policies and influence over the rest of the World. I talked with my Mom on the 4th and she mentioned that for the first time in 8 years she had decided to put out the American flag for the 4th of July. She said that this was the first time in a long time she has felt our country is headed in a positive direction. Let's hope her feelings are right.