storm damage

Brutal

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The storms that hit last night were absolutely brutal.

Thankfully, we seem to have escaped most of it, but there is massive damage to the south of us. Highways were flooded over, and people shared images of cars with nothing but the top of the roof showing, along them. One of the highways we regularly take to the city has been shut down due to flood damage. One person reporting a sink hole the size of a car. Others posted pictures showing chunks of road missing. The highway and weather groups I follow were constantly posting warnings. Funnel clouds were scene, and there has been serious damage in the city. Parts of the province are without power and will probably remain so for another day, at least.

I was up by 4am and already getting notifications and started to message with my brother about highway conditions. Thankfully, where they now live hasn’t had any flooding or major damage, that we know of so far. My husband’s sister is in one of the areas without power, and says there are a lot of downed trees.

Once it was light enough out, I went outside to check on things, fully expecting to find more dead trees had fallen, or at least lots of broken branches.

I found neither!

We were expecting an assessor from the insurance company my brother hopes to switch to this afternoon, so I made sure to open the gate while I was doing my rounds. The mostly filled in and grown over pond in the old hay yard, near that gate, was singing loudly!

There were SO many frogs, and they were so very loud!

Along with checking around the outer yard, in the barn and around my brother’s equipment, I made sure to check the garden beds. Amazingly, they were all just fine. No damage at all! The netting, etc. on almost all the beds protected them from hail, and the collars protected delicate transplants and new sprouts from high winds.

In the image after the brief video above, you can see the nice new leaves showing on the Manchurian walnut! Checking the Black walnut, one of them doesn’t seem to have survive the winter, but the others are leaving out nicely. In the last image, you can see the two rows I direct sowed recently, with the re-seeded row of Daikon radish seedlings on the left, and red noodle beans on the right. Both of them germinated so very quickly!

I was also looking around to see how the yard cats were doing. They seem to have all been able to take shelter and were looking downright content.

I have been catching Sprig on the netting over this bed repeatedly, leaning against it and squishing the garlic. So I moved the hoops from being in the soil to jamming them into the wattle weave as best I could – the ends kept trying to go completely through. This raised the net high enough to make more room for the garlic and dwarf peas – and it turns out to be able to support the weight of Sprig, too!

In the next image, you can see Misha – a beautiful furry flower among the roses, being very nervous because I was getting too close.

In the next image, I caught Curtis, mid yawn! He, Bug and The Grink have been cuddling together a lot lately.

I got the last picture of Colby – mid yawn! – later in the afternoon. He is such a beauty!

I managed to get some weed trimming done around the house. I hoped to get more done, as we’re expecting more rain tonight. I only had two fully charged batteries, though, and it took more time and effort than usual. The Chinese Elm seeds have been drifting against the edges that I needed to trim, and the driving rain packed them into solid masses. In some places, I had to get the stiff bristle yard broom out to clear the stuck masses of seeds away before I could even try to trim the edges. There was a lot of starting and stopping, as I also had to move things around to get under or around them. In some places, I had to break out the pruning shears to trim things too thick or strong for the weed trimmer line.

One thing that didn’t happen today. The insurance company assessor didn’t make it. My brother had contacted her to tell her not to use a particular highway, but suggested a different one. At first, she said it would be okay, but after that she must have heard more damage reports and wanted to reschedule to Monday. That’s when the funeral is, though, so it was instead rescheduled to tomorrow morning. Which doesn’t make much sense to me, because not a lot will change overnight. Especially with more rain on the way. We’ve also got a prescription delivery tomorrow. We don’t actually know what the conditions of the gravel roads are, other than what’s immediately around us. What is immediately around us is fine, and there’s only a couple of sections that might be of concern if there was flooding. Based on what I can see so far, though, I don’t think there would have been any flooding. Our own ditches and driveway would be a lot fuller, if it got to that point.

As I’m writing this, I can hear thunder. We’re expected to get rain roughly and hour from now, for about an hour, then more rain is supposed to be from about 5am to noon tomorrow.

The assessor is supposed to come at around 10. She’s supposed to walk around the property to look at the house and outbuildings from the outside, and the scheduled time slot is for 2 hours.

Hmmm… We’ll see if she even makes it at all. I expect our gravel roads are fine, but if she’s coming from the city, from what I’m hearing, there is plenty of damage and debris on the other two highways she could take to come out here. From what I can see on the highways map, a couple of intersections are closed down due to flooding (unlike the many miles shut down on the highway nearest us), while other small sections are marked as “incidents”, stating water on the road and proceed with caution.

I’m chatting with my brother as I write this. He says he is thinking of cancelling the assessment outright for now.

That might be a good idea. After the upcoming rain, who knows how much worse it will be! We don’t have tornado warnings anymore, but do have warnings for flash flooding and hail.

Which reminds me. I’ve heard nothing from the garage about my truck. It’s entirely possible either mechanics couldn’t make it into work, or they’ve been deluged with vehicles damaged by hail, debris or flooding. Or both.

We’re oddly relieved that it broke down when it did!

Okay, that thunder is a lot closer. I think it’s time to shut down my computer, just in case!

For anyone else under this weather system, be safe out there!

The Re-Farmer

A bit of storm damage, and checking the venturi

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I headed out this afternoon to check on the yards and gardens, to see what damage, if any, the storm caused.

Thankfully, the garden is all fine, and the only damage I found was a broken branch.

A very large branch, mind you!

I almost missed it! It had fallen into the “living fence” my mother had planted, which was holding it up.

Getting it down was a bit risky, though. I had to get right under a hawthorn to be able to pull it out. After I managed to get it far enough I could move further away, I took a look and realized just how close I came to getting my back impaled by many very sharp thorns! Those things are deadly!

You can see more clearly, in the second photo of the slideshow above, just how large the branch turned out to be. I dragged it out closer to the fire pit, where there’s more room to break it down, but left it for now. I don’t know what the humidex put us at, but we were at 30C/86F at the time. As I write this, we’ve cooled down to 28C/82F, and with the humidex putting us at 32C/90F. That little bit of exertion was enough to leave me almost as soaked with sweat as I was when I got caught in the storm!

Before I checked the yard, though, I went to check on the septic expeller. Normally, I’d go through the barn to do this, but my brother’s tractor is in the way! I tried to go around, but there’s just too much junk in the old cow stalls on either side. So I had to make my way through the tall grass – I swear, some of it is as tall as I am! – to the vehicle gate. It has both a chain across it, and the renter’s electric fence wire, to keep the cows out. The cows have been rotated out, though, so the electric fence is off right now.

This is what I found when I pulled the pipe out.

In the first two photos, you can see black part way up the pipe, where it then ends abruptly. Which means that the greywater has been going up into the outer pipe, but only so far. It’s not overflowing.

I brought the pipe to the yard and hosed it off, then ran water through both ends of the pipe.

There is no clog in the pipe at all.

So… what does this tell me?

It could be that the venturi was simply not seated properly at the bottom of the pipe. Rather than going through the venturi and being expelled out the top, the greywater was going into the outer pipe, but then draining into the soil around it fast enough that it never overflowed at the top.

Or there is something wrong at the bottom of the pipe that prevents a proper seal once the venture is set in the bottom.

I’ve sent the images to my brother, in hopes he has a better idea. He would remember the actual installation of all this, and probably helped do it. I was just too young. All I remember is the trench dug from the well towards the barn. I don’t even remember the pipes being laid down in the trench.

My hope is that it’s just the pipe wasn’t seated properly when I cleaned up around there, back in early July. I’d taken the pipe out to check it, but I was sure I’d set it back in properly. You can actually feel when it pushes into place.

I’m leaving it out for now and will take it back tomorrow, and see what I can see inside the outer pipe. With the inner pipe removed, the outer pipe should fill up faster when the pump runs, and actually overflow. If it does, I should see signs of that.

It would be really awesome if all it is, is the pipe not set properly! If that’s at, and water is flowing through the expeller properly again, that means we don’t need to call anyone and possibly need to get it excavated!

I’m just glad we are finding this problem now, and not in the winter!

The Re-Farmer

Sudden storm damage

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Well, today started with a bang.

Literally.

At about 5:30 am, I was awakened, first by a flash of light, then about a half second later, a massive peal of thunder! That I even saw the flash of light at all, through my mostly sheltered, small, west facing window, tells me more than anything just how bright it was, never mind being awakened by it.

Almost immediately after, we got hit with a sudden downpour, along with a light show and more thunder. It was gone as suddenly as it started, moving quickly across the region. Looking at the weather radar, the system was a wide, narrow band of severe weather sweeping to the southeast. Later in the day, I was hearing reports from various other towns and cities that experienced much the same thing. Mostly clear skies with just a few clouds, a quick deluge as the system hit, then clear and sunny again!

My plan had been to head to the city early in the day to do our second stock-up shop, so as to avoid the storms predicted for the afternoon. Instead, we got the storms early, and I headed out later!

While doing my morning rounds, I found there was very little damage. A couple of downed branches, and this…

This dead spruce was actually on the ditch side of the fence line. I remember looking at it, earlier this summer, and thinking we could probably take that down before it falls…

I’m not sure how we’re going to clean this up now. It’s not really accessible. The lilac hedge envelops the base, and I don’t want to create a gap in the hedge. It’ll just give the deer another place to jump through.

We’ll figure it out. Assuming the lilacs holding it up don’t just give out and it falls the rest of the way down on its own.

As for the rest of the day, it has been hot and muggy. According to the weather app on my computer, we’re at 28C/82F, but it feels like 30C/86F. We’re supposed to hit 30C/86F tomorrow, then again a couple of days after, before things start to cool down slightly, again. I check different apps, and some say we’ll get more thunderstorms, while other don’t even say rain.

I’d like at least a couple of days of no rain and lower humidity, though, so I can get some painting done outside. Or cooler days without rain, so I can take down more dead trees.

The heat, however looks like it will be hanging around for a while, though!

The Re-Farmer

Finding storm damage, and critters!

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My evening rounds today included picking up fallen branches, and assessing storm damage. It’s been a long time since we’ve had so many fallen branches, I needed the wheel barrow to help pick them all up!

Here is a slideshow of what I found in and around the spruce grove.

While I was out with my mother, my daughters tell me the rain, then the storm with hail, went through so quickly, it was like a tap was turned on in the sky. One of them actually saw the top of the spruce come down.

Walking around the perimeter of the spruce grove, I found where a large chunk of dead poplar had fallen, causing damage to an apple tree nearby. As I went closer to see how big it was, I realized I was seeing more than one tree top. It’s hard to see in the undergrowth, but the top of another dead spruce had come down, and the two actually overlapped each other on the ground.

In the same general area, there was also an entire tree that had fallen. No surprise that the based had been destabilized by ants. That’s usually why the dead trees finally fall.

Going past the garage and along the fence line, there was a pile of downed branches from several trees. After that, things seems pretty normal. A few dead branches and there, but there are already so many in there, it makes little difference. There is one tree, however, that keeps tipping further and further. It’s actually still alive, but slowly falling. Meanwhile, there are two dead trees right next to it that are still standing, straight and tall!

Making my way back to where I started around the spruce grove, I suddenly saw a little kitten running across the grass, towards the covered pile of boards – what we used to call the junk pile, but I’ve clear the junk off and discovered a carefully stacked pile of salvaged boards. Whatever tarps had covered it before were disintegrated by the wind, but we were able to cover it with a new, heavier duty tarp, in hopes that we’ll be able to keep them from rotting even more, and be able to use some of them. This pile has been home to litters of kittens for a very long time – and is how Junk Pile Cat got her name!

So I had no doubt little grey tabby was returning to its next under the pile. I took a couple of zoomed in photos, but didn’t try to come any closer, as I made my way back to the house, where I saw Junk Pile (or her doppelgänger; I can’t tell them apart unless they are next to each other, and I haven’t seen one of them in ages) cross the yard to the covered pile. When I came around the lilacs, I startled a little white and grey kitten! As I slowly paused and took its picture, I spotted another kitten peeking at me from under the down spout. When the two of them got together, I had to try and get some video. The image quality drops off the more I had to zoom in, but at the end, another white and grey kitten is there with Junk Pile – and this one is much larger than the others! I’ve no doubt they’re being cared for together as one litter, but the last white and grey kitten is clearly older.

After checking things around the inner yard, I headed out to check things in the outer yard. There are several maples with a lot of dead sections, and I wanted to see if any more dead branches had come down in the storm.

As I came close to one of them, I heard some scrabbling and at first thought it was a cat climbing the tree.

I was wrong.

I went looking for branches, but found three little racoons, instead! They kept freezing, the moving a few inches, then freezing, the shifting a bit, then freezing again.

That gave me a chance to get quite a few photos, and even some video.

Gosh, they are so cute!

But I do wish they wouldn’t keep eating the cat food! We already had to stop feeing the birds because of them (and the deer), but they are quite the opportunistic omnivores!

On top of all this, I was being followed all over by at least three yard cats the whole time. This was a very critter filled evening!

The Re-Farmer