This happened overnight. Luckily we detected the first signs of water and left the house before so we didn't have to wake up in the middle of this little pond.
This was the deepest trench we had before the flood arrived. We had managed to dig this one before the ground started to freeze. As you can see, it completely filled up.
When the water started reaching the solar panels, we knew things were getting serious. We removed them from the place so all is safe.
Half of our garden area was completely flooded. We had wondered why the soil wasn't very good in a place that had little human intervention. A good guess is that when these floods occur, they wash away a lot of nutrients, leaving only the clayish soil.
From here on it's mainly pictures of the flooded areas. Especially those that didn't have water before and we were surprised to see at this level.
This was our clothes washing spot and the outfits you see hanging were safely hanged in what was considered a "dry spot". Guess that's changed now.
Days like this it's tempting to say that the whole living in Nature thing is over-romanticized. While there's obviously a lot of beauty involved, there are also moments that put you to the test, such as the flood we're experiencing right now. A combination of events led to this disaster: first the soil froze due to low temperatures and next heavy rains came with no drainage due to the frost. As a result the stream next to our house grew out of proportions and reached our house.
It happened from one day to the next and we were not prepared. It had been on our mind to dig trenches but with the frozen ground it was impossible to break through. In all the years @fenngen had been living in this place, such thing had never happened, so it felt very harsh to get this from Mother Nature before we could even finish our house.
We were tempted to give up on the whole project, and accept this as a sign that we weren't meant to be there. However, we've pushed through and since the water removed some of the ice we've begin to carve out paths so that it might flow away from the house. We'll be showing this work on a future post.
Anyway, we're grateful that we're safe and that nothing was seriously harmed. We were able to remove all the electric equipment in time, being the solar battery the riskiest element as we had it on the ground. Hopefully, we'll overcome this episode and be able to see things with optimism once again. We have many ideas on how to deal with this in the future but we would also be happy to receive any advice.
Thanks for stopping by, hoping no one else has to face this kind of challenges.