Damages and Images: Part One, the Wonder and the Havoc

Three weeks ago, on January seventeenth, the whole of the Pacific Northwest received a large dumping of snow overnight, on top of a fairly typical earlier snowing,

short lived and melty, on the fifteenth and sixteenth. 

 Nearly as soon as we woke up on the eighteenth

and were ready to enjoy a near record breaking snowfall, those of us in the South Puget Sound area began receiving freezing rain on top of the snow by noon. 

The ice rain continued on and off through the nineteenth and into the early morning of the twentieth.  It glued the snow onto everything and then added a dense casing of ice on top of that.

It was incredibly beautiful.  

But then quickly turned less than. 

By the next morning we woke to broken trees and spent the day listening to the near silent destructive storm. No howling wind, only the tinkling of the ice rain on your jacket and the crack of branches and trees.  The aftermath, even three weeks later, is ugly and disruptive.  The weight of the snow and ice broke and fell so many trees it is overwhelming to think of the damage around our farm. 

Luckily, earlier snow and ice storms, like the one we had January, 2004, caused the loss and removal of all trees around the Farmhouse, so our house only received minimal damage from the ice and snow itself, not from a tree falling on it, which could have made matters much worse.

The roofs at the farm are metal and most are steep, they often afford some fantastic snow images but this time they also afforded our only house damage. It was to our screen porch, bottom right of the picture cluster, the ice laden snow on the steep roof of the center of the house eventually broke loose and crashed down on our poor little porch. Easy fix among fixes.

The fence lines didn’t fair as well.  Our west fence line is obliterated by our neighbor’s fallen trees.  Our south fence line is fairly covered by the trees from our wood lot. The worst of the fence line mess, the west line, is inaccessible until our water levels return to summer levels, some time right around haying season I’m sure.

The melting of all this snow and ice on top of frozen ground caused localized flooding.  Of course the flooding here at the farm never rises to the level of that near rivers, no danger to life, unless you’re a worm or soil microbe. Now that we receive far more run off than we used to in the first years we lived here, I have been learning how to not have my Market Garden and most of our pastures be under water during our freeze, melt and rain season, November to March.  It is hard to grow grass and crops under water and it takes much longer for soil to recover from extended waterlogging. 

The biggest consumption of my time since the storm, when I’m not doing the things on my regular work to do list, like

tending fuchsia and geranium starts, putting seeded flats together, weeding ornamental, onion and garlic beds, harvesting greens and roots, and keeping the house, has been water control. 

Late this last summer and all during the fall I managed to do quite a bit of restructuring in the highway hedgerow, forming Pumpkin Pond, doing the ground work for essentially a rain garden, and assuring that the largest amount of garden flooding that occurred last year wouldn’t repeat this year. 

These last three weeks, with all the water that needed to find its way to the ponds and channels and off of the Market Garden and pasture grass, I have been forming shallow water ways in the pasture to allow the water to move quicker off of vital ground and running the pump on the one spot I can’t seem to find a low tech solution for. Hopefully curing the Market Garden flooding that still occurred in some spots, by reliving the water pressure, and getting the often months long standing water off of the pasture so that there is less winter kill, more late winter growth and quicker spring return to rapid growth. 

I want to get to more pictures of the destruction but I really need to get out and help Bet work on the sheep walkway and finishing up the sheeps’ loafing area for this year’s lambing.  It is another great day today here at the Farm, the sun is shining and it is toasty warm.  I’ll return soon with my earth moving project of yesterday and what is standing, or more accurately, laying in my way of completion.  I hope that will be soon.  Along with some other computer oriented endeavors.  See ya soon Dear Reader.