Working in the Heat

I mentioned earlier that I don’t really mind the Valley’s heat, but it is a constant topic for conversation for Arizonans. We’ve even been in the national news lately because of our record temperatures. Our favorite waitress at Nando’s mentioned yesterday that she drives a vehicle that is not air conditioned, and we all murmured sympathetically at the very thought. I’ve had several people ask me how the farmers survived the heat back in the day, so I thought I’d share a few stories from The Mister’s memory of farming in the heat.

The time frame I’m detailing is the 60’s, when The Mister was a kid, but very involved in daily farming during the summer. Today’s construction crews start around 5 am and quit about 3 pm; the farmer’s schedule was a 6am to 6pm day, every day except Sunday. They would concentrate on the labor-intensive chores early in the morning and hope to do the less strenuous jobs as the day grew hotter.

Have you ever wondered why farmers wear long sleeve shirts in the summer? (My kids have teased their dad for years because of this propensity.) Cotton crops are irrigated in Arizona by the siphon pipe method. Cotton is planted in rows, and when it’s time to add water, hundreds of slightly curved pipes about 5 feet long and 2 inches in diameter are draped over the banks of the ditches and into the individual rows. Getting the water to run through these tubes is accomplished using the siphon principle; and no, that doesn’t mean the farmer bends down and sucks on the pipe to get the water started. Rather, they grab the pipe and cover one end with the palm of their hand and then force the other end into the water; when they throw the pipe down into the cotton row and release the stopped up end, the water begins to flow. It’s amazing to watch how quickly they can get all those pipes started and the water flowing out to the crop. (I have a memory of my own, as a newlywed farmer’s wife getting the call that the water was here – in the ditch – and there was no irrigator to start the field. The Mister and his older brother and the 2 wives raced to the field to start the water, because nothing is so embarrassing to a farmer as mishandling water. The Mister started about 5 tubes for every 1 that I started, but I like to think that I was helpful in averting disaster.) So when you mix metal siphon tubes with 115 degrees, what do you get? Scorched forearms, of course. The heat can still go through the thin cotton long sleeves, but it is muted a little. Add a cowboy hat to keep the sun off the face and back of the neck, and you have the daily uniform. (Notice that the subject of wearing shorts isn’t even considered; that would be preposterous.)

Water, specifically hydration, is the other key to farming in the heat. Each worker is responsible to bring his own water, and various methods were employed over the years to ensure that the water was at least cool (no igloos filled with ice water, I asked, incredulously? None, came the reply). The Mister remembers the canvas bags filled with water that they would hang from the tractor’s radiator; the bags were designed to leak, and the air going through miraculously kept the water cooler than the ambient temperature. Later on, they used a different system yielding colder water. A gallon milk jug filled three quarters full of water and frozen, then topped off on the way to the field, would provide enough cool water throughout the day.

The tractors did not have cabs at this time; and if they did, it would have killed the driver by bottling up the heat, because the only air conditioned vehicles were the family sedans, and even that was considered a luxury. The Mister’s father welded pipes onto the frame of the tractors and stretched canvas over the driver’s head to provide about 6 feet of shade – far superior to the small umbrellas that only shaded the driver part of the time.

Driving a swather was one of the more uncomfortable jobs, other than getting to sit while working. A swather is a vehicle that cuts the hay and forms it into a wind row. During these days, the family was cubing the hay, so it would sit in these rows, then get turned over by another machine, and eventually be compressed into cubes. The moisture from the dew was necessary for successful swathing, so those drivers started at 5 am and drove until about 10am when it got too dry to continue. The hay was extremely dusty and filled with every type of bug known to man, according to The Mister, and all that dust and all those bugs would fly up into the face of the driver as he proceeded through the field. I stopped him when he started telling about the effect on the nasal passages by asking if they didn’t wear bandannas or something. Some did, he acknowledged, but the heat made that even more uncomfortable than breathing bugs.

So the answer to working in the heat is not complex: shade from the direct onslaught of the sun, and hydration. Farmers have done it for many, many, years and lived to tell about it. If I can talk myself into weeding my flower beds, you’ll see me with my long sleeves and hat and frozen water jug by my side. Or maybe not; maybe I’ll just continue to enjoy the blessing of air conditioning.