Our good start came crashing down around us yesterday.  Winter Storm Elliot came bustling through our area, and while most of the country was left buried in snow in its wake, we warmed up to 50*F and had the strangest winter storm I can remember.  Hurricane force wind gusts, inches of rain, severe thunderstorm alerts, and temperatures plunging into the teens to single digits overnight.  We've lost most of our snow pack and everything froze.  

 

Friday morning, December 23rd

Saturday morning, December 24th

Once again, thousands are without power.  The winds from this storm came from the southwest, when typically they come from the northeast.  Trees toppled, limbs fell, and low areas flooded.  What a mess.  Thankfully for us the bitter cold is nowhere near as bad as it is in the Midwest right now.  And the long range forecast?  Well, there's another oddity.

I can only hope that things will settle into a more normal pattern in the latter part of winter. 

Ooo La La! The French Drain Project

Although my tiny ditches were working to divert water away from the barn, they weren't a permanent solution.  A French drain, or area drain, definitely is.  Since Flea is in the midst of a health crisis, I can't really move the mules out of the way, so only half of the project is on the docket at this point.  This wasn't something I could do myself, so I had to hire someone with a tractor who knew what they were doing.  Our neighbor's son was just that person.

The drain system begins at the fence, where the water tends to pool the most, and follows the foundation around the corner and down the hay room access side and out to the edge of the woods.  It just so happens that the land at that point slopes downward, which is a perfect scenario for a drainage exit. 

The contractor started by digging a trench about three feet deep, pitching it down little by little as he went.  Luckily the water line is 4 feet below the surface, so that wasn't an issue, but the electric line was a little less deep.  Good thing the contractor was the son of the electrician who installed the line, so they were able to find it with no problem and dig below it.

He then filled the trench with 3/8 crushed stone, laid the drain pipe on top of that, and very gently filled the trench with more stone.  The stone allows the water to filter down to the pipe, which has slits throughout the length of it.  The slits allow the water to enter the pipe, which then directs it along the length and out the end of the drain if there is an excessive amount of water all at once.  The plastic pipe is covered in a "sock"; a nylon type of material that allows water to pass through it, but keeps silt and sand from plugging up the slits. 

The drain was finished just in time for some torrential downpours to test it out.  We've been lacking rain and are teetering on drought conditions, so this was a welcomed event.  I went out between thunder storms to see how things were holding up.  There was minimal ponding in front of the run in door, and some standing water along the driveway, well away from the barn.

By this morning, even after a night of on and off storms and showers, there was no more standing water.

Hopefully next summer I'll have the paddock squared away to the point that we can move the mules and install the same drain around the rest of the barn perimeter, but for now this a massive improvement.  Now I can get some topsoil on that area in front of the door and plant some grass.

Seasonal lament

Spring in New England, gotta love it.  Used your heat and air conditioning in one day?  Yup.  One day you're in a t-shirt, the next morning you wake up to a dusting of snow.  Although, it's still beautiful.

And this will be the view out my living room window next year.

I need to find a good tree person to work on that mulberry tree in the center of the pasture.  Over the years the horses ate all the lower branches and now there's bittersweet vines beginning to choke it.  If you've never had mulberries, they're the most delicious berries ever, so saving this tree is a must.

I have my finished plans for the ADU in my hot little hands, so now I'm just waiting for the septic design.

This little woolly bear caterpillar crawled out from under a snowbank the other day.  Little early, dude.  You can see him just above the crack in the step.

Yesterday a big fox was out in the pasture, and Fish & Game has started to ask people to bring in bird feeders because the bears are beginning to emerge from their winter dens.  Love these signs of spring!

These signs, not so much.

Ugh.  The big barn is temporarily a large flooded mess.  Mom & I spent a few hours pumping it out to try to get it to dry up.  I had to move the snow blowers and my air compressor up onto pallets to get them out of the water.  In some spots it was about 3" deep.  Always an adventure!