And here we begin the yearly ritual heralding Spring - the flooding. For many years, it was the basement - the room which was to have originally been a play room, then a workspace - but finally the place where storage boxes go to hide so they do not need to be emptied. We would get many inches of seepage and become quite familiar with the shop vac and steam vac. But, after quite a bit of money, we seem to have gotten a handle on that.
Now, we have the farm, and the barn, which was built (foolishly) below grade of EVERYTHING. The original dirt bridge, the driveway, the pasture - so many possible places for water to run from and end in the barn! We spend a lot more money to have drainage worked on and springs re-routed, and a pond built, but that still does not raise the barn. (I'd like to raze the barn and start fresh!) Two dump truck loads of gravel last fall and we got the back of the barn raised up some - but the snows startedin Nov., and then our contractor went to Florida, and so on, so the front of the barn is still as it was last year - low, and now wet.
Today, in the gorgeous sunshine and warm temps, my eldest son, my husband and I spent the day pumping out the barn, chipping ditches into earth that is frozen solid, and trying to re-grade the driveway a bit. We have gotten quite good at "paddling" the water out of swampy puddles with snow shovels. As soon as it is pumped out more seeps in... Not to be a total grump, but I am not looking forward to the next two days of warm, and then four or five of predicted rain! Can we jump right to summer, please?
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| He is not amused! |
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| This was chipped away a sliver at a time. |
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