Our last post ended up with the departure of Mike's family mid-May. All was well and we had been working really hard to make new changes to the place. On May 29th and 31st, heavy storms hit our region. This had not happened since 2018. The hill on top of us, covered with wheat and sunflower fields, couldn't handle all that water. The ditches were over flooding, the water entered our neighbor's garage and dropped in our garden which is just beside our house. The water dropped as a waterfall.
The water was coming down the wall hard and this eroded the land along the wall. The rose bushes planted alond the wall have had a hard time. On that first day, the waterfall was active 3 times but the house was not touched. Two days later it happened again. The water infiltrated under the road above us, the pavement literally exploded from the pressure caused by the water and water came UNDER the wall right onto our recessed patio. The patio was filled with muddy/clayish water and the level came quite high (up to the windows) as you can see on this picture.
The doors held good but there was a small opening between the doorway and the stone wall and water found its way inside. It was 20:30 on a Wednesday evening. Edward came over earlier and was chatting with Mike and I was in the kitchen preparing supper when suddenly we realized what was happening. Mike and I went outside to make a ditch to divert the water away from the house and we started scooping up water emptying the patio and stopping water to enter our house. Once this was under control, I called the Maire to inform him about the situation. The street in front of our house was flooded and this went all the way to the village. On the other side of the main street, our gardens were a disaster. The Maire asked to post an urgent message on one of our telephone apps asking people to come help us and within 15 minutes, we were about 15 people in our house cleaning up this mess. I was overwhelmed but kept my calm. I felt so grateful about all that help, all kind of people, people we didn't know who came to offer help and support. Within 1.5 hour the place was "cleaned" inside and outside. The Fireman crew came as well! When everyone had left, Mike fired up our wood stove and the heated floor dried the entire house. At 23:00 we were sitting down in front of a warm meal, still trying to understand what happened the past hours. That same evening I called my work, I was exhausted, I needed time the next morning to call our insurance and get my bearings back.
One positive thing is that all our walls are stoned walls (no drywall which would have swollen) and that all our furniture stands on "feet" which means that the water level never came high enough (20 cm about) to damage the under side of the furniture or wet the inside of the cabinets. The natural stone floor is also way better then wood floor when you have such a catastrophe.
Two weeks later, I was on vacation. This was no vacation because I needed to clean up all the gardens, especially where the young plants had been planted because the flooding had brought a mix of clay and water all around the straw cover creating a suffocating layer. This is how thick clay was in some areas.
In most parts of the garden, I removed all the straw I had carefully laid three weeks before. I raked around the plants to air the soil out and I covered the soil again with fresh straw. Friends from the association Passe-Graines came daily a couple of hours to give me a hand. This was more than enough: an exchange of good time coupled with helping hands. This period showed me how important it is to create a social network, to be present to one another, to exchange. I am still having problems dealing with what happened, emotionally it did something to me.
Crops like the onions have been hurting but the rest of the garden was cleaned on time to provide good harvest up to now. Luckily the potatoes and the garlic were planted in the upper garden where plants did not suffer too much the presence of that extra water.
The counter part of all that water is that this year is a great year for fruit! And we have discovered an apricot tree just here beside the house. Wow! This is our first harvest in the 6 years we have been here. The fruit were juicy and really tasty. We had plenty to eat fresh, harvesting just while passing by, and enough to make some jam with: peach-apricot jam and wild prune-apricot jam.
Beside the apricots, the strawberry production was nice. We have been eating raspberries (and this is still going on) and wild prunes. I have missed the harvest of the elderberry (flowers and fruit) because of everything that was going on. The figs and peaches still have to ripen as I am writing those lines. The quince and the apples will come a bit later in the fall. It is nice to see that every fruit has his own "season" and this makes it possible to enjoy various fruit all summer round.
After all the rainfalls of June, July was quite humid and wet and all that humidity was deadly for most "outside" tomato crops. They got attacked by mildew, a fungus-based disease. But this year, it reached my tomatoes in the green house as well because our green house is open on one side and the fungus is airborne. I was busy with other things and I didn't threat to prevent spread of the disease. My production is sufficient for daily consumption but I won't have enough for canning this year. I might have to buy some tomatoes at the Biocoop if I want to enjoy good tomatoes all year round.
Honey Harvest:
This year, the hives have been working well and I was able to harvest 14 kg of honey. This honey is a mix of everything that the bees have been harvesting during the whole season. I did only one harvest mid-July because I had to borrow an extractor. Borrowing means doing the work in one time, this gives less flexibility than owning one. On the other side, owning is expensive and takes storage space. For now, this will be a good compromise.
The whole season I have been fighting agains hornets and I have done good, but the fight is not over yet. If we could find a big nest before October we would be able to destroy it and at the same time reduce the hornet population for next year. There are a couple of bee keepers who could get together to pay for the destruction and help our bees.
At La Peyrère, DIY really means Do-It-Yourselves as much as possible. This is Mike's hobby and this happens often in our life considering that our vehicles are between 1983 and 1994.
But this project is big! Mike bought is gray Mitsubishi L200 on his birthday in December 2018. Now, he found a parts truck exactly the same and he is rebuilding the whole thing using the best of both. While I do the gardening and canning, Mike is renovating and fixing things. All and all a good combination ;)
Farewell Grinouk! On August 7th, Grinouk moved away with his owner, Marianne, who had been renting our apartment for almost 2 years now. We may see him once in a while but the daily visit our now past history.
We are expecting more visitors this summer yet. Monique is arriving next week from the Netherlands and around September 15th, Dawn, one of Mike's friend from Canada will be spending a week with us while traveling through. Looking forward to see YOU in South of France.
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