Before we bought Crow Farm we were told that flooding sometimes happens here. The flood plane goes into the hayfields a bit but doesn’t reach the house. It’s one thing to see pictures and hear stories, it’s another thing to actually see it with your own eyes.
A couple weeks before the actual flood we had some warning signs so we were more or less ready when it came. For one, our hayfields became so saturated with water that the girls could and did boat in it. Our oldest suggested the idea and I passively told her that if she wanted to try to bring the hard kayak out she could. So, she suited up in her life jacket, carried the boat out of the barn and dragged it into the hayfield along with the paddle. Now, it’s not that heavy but it’s not light by any means and is certainly unwieldy. Sure enough, she was able to paddle around in the field!
From there we noticed that the drainage ditches along the sides of our road were brimming as well. On the opposite side of the road it was quite wide as well which left room to comfortably paddle and even turn around! It was really so fun to watch the girls paddle back and forth along the length of the road. We had a handful of people drive by and comment on the kayakers. It was just too good not to take advantage of! The only downside was it was very cold out and when in the hayfield the girls got soaked to the bone. Brr! They had to take a warm-up break inside and get on some dry clothes before going on to kayak next to the road.
After about a week the water level by the road and in our hayfield went down to it’s baseline for winter. That is, until one night it must have rained particularly hard without us knowing. In the morning we woke to find our road completely flooded!! The water spread into our hayfields, up our driveway a little and covered the property across the street from us. It was crazy! The water was gushing down the road as if it had always been a raging river. We have 3 road exits from our property one of which is up on the top of our hill. However, to get to that upper driveway you have to enter via a different road than is connected to our barn exit and our main driveway to the house. Moving the car out the main driveway was impossible. The water was the deepest at the end of our main driveway where the car was parked. In addition our low little car would have had water past the base of the door. The van, however was parked next to the barn and that driveway had significantly more shallow water, as the “river” took a bend off the road just before the driveway. Plus, the van has much higher clearance than our car. Justin was able to slowly move the van out of the barn driveway, through the water and then park it in our upper parking spot. Thank goodness for that van!
It stayed flooded for a little less than a week and honestly, we didn’t go anywhere even with the van up the hill. We had plenty of food and other supplies. It was really just a precaution but I’m glad we did it nonetheless. Good practice, right? It sounded like a good idea to paddle down what was now a really wide river just in front of the house but it was carrying debris and moving too fast for me to even consider letting the girls do that. It was really amazing to see though! Our mail couldn’t be delivered due to the flood but that was about all the negative effects it had on us. Once the waters subsided we noticed the flood waters had carried giant heavy boards and bricks we had used to “patch” a gap in the pig field fence all the way into the middle of the hayfield about 150ft away. Strong current! We felt lucky we could just watch and admire the flood from a safe distance without anything getting damaged and a little sad that it didn’t trap our family here for even longer for their holiday visit.
