As the weather is not at its best I spent most of today either glossing the work surface or whitewashing part of the kitchen walls or collecting feed for the alpacas and chickens. Kitchen progress is slow but I would rather it was that than rush it and have problems later. All the cats have stayed in too and I really don’t blame them today. During the late afternoon we had one of the torrential downpours I’m beginning to get use to. The rain comes down like a white sheet, 3 or 4 or more millimetre in 10 - 15 mins and today it contained hail as well. The Dordogne, to the north of me is on flood alert and some of the rivers there have already burst their banks and inundated the towns.
Here it’s just filling the ditches but ensuring that I can’t get onto the land to start working it. The rain is also heavy enough that it beats the surface flat so that when it dries there is a hard crust, which if allowed to dry, sets like concrete. The weather is due to change for the weekend when we’re forecast temperatures of up to 25°C so with luck I will be able to get outside and get going. This is a picture of my neighbour’s field just below the house.
The furrows where I’ve ploughed the new vegetable garden have successfully channelled all the water to the bottom end so I can see that I will have to sort out the drainage there before next year. At the top of the vegetable area is where I tried to cut a ditch with the plough as my first go at using a plough. It wasn’t very successful as again the ground was far to wet and I couldn’t get any grip but even so it has diverted the majority of the water into the ditch and kept it away from the pump house. The ditches do channel away an amazing amount of water; this is the main ditch that collects the majority of the water from my little valley and it’s been running like this for the last week.
2 comments:
Hmmm, RAIN. Less than a week since it dried out enough to till, I'm already really wanting rain to water in all the shallower seeded stuff like spinach and beets. Maybe not torrential downpours, probably not, but a nice drenching would be good. It's hard to believe how dry things can get. More of this pesky weird weather/global warming, I think, 'cause even when I started only five years ago, you could kinda count on April as a month when you could see for free (no watering, the soil had enough moisture.
Hey, I think I just wrote one of my catch-up blog posts over here... :)
I've gotta figure out where you are exactly, the climate/zone. I dunno if you've posted that. I'm get disoriented with different gardens start times, even with the few I'm following!!
Hi Deborah, wow that down pour was amazing yesterday. It's been like that here this morning too. I've just got back from Bergerac airport, it was pouring down and the sky was black as coal. It's too wet to do anything outside, just watch the hay field grow and bet on the number of bails we get this year. Snowy looks content anyway. Debs x
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