Water Everywhere

California desperately needs rain. We got our wish. The weather forecasters and news people have replaced Pineapple Express with Bomb Cyclone for this year’s description of extreme weather (or maybe they mean different things). Those of us who have lived in California for years just call it a Winter Storm. That doesn’t lessen the serious impact for people living where levees break or rivers flood. And even in the old days of the Winter Storms I don’t remember the extreme winds of last night. Whatever your frame of reference, I agree it’s wet. And wouldn’t it be nice if the water came where and when you wanted it?

Those of you who have been here will recognize this as the area where we park extra vehicles when having a larger group of people here—at least in dry weather. Not so much this year. The barn hasn’t flooded but the water is right up to the level of the concrete.

I took these photos on Thursday. The rain gauge showed 1.6” that morning following 3 days of 1/2” each day. That’s not that much rain for many places. But the ground has been saturated from the last couple of weeks and we live in the flatland. When you live on a hill, the water can go somewhere else, but there is nowhere else for it to go here. Also there is a clay layer, and that prevents water from percolating as well, even in the pasture where there is a lot of plant growth.

Chickens might cross the road willingly, but they didn’t want to cross the water here to get over to their chicken house.

This is behind the barn. We have always (in years of rain) had a winter-time lake here. I dig ditches to move water away from the barn on the east side, but there is a limit to what I can do to move water across more flat land.

The good news is that the sheep may be crowded but they can all find a place out of the water. It won’t hurt sheep to be out in the rain, but they do need a place to lie down where there isn’t standing water. It is also good that they can get on dry grown for the health of their feet.

On Wednesday evening before I took those flood photos I had a ewe at UCD for an unusual situation. She is extremely anemic and I took a few other sheep with her as blood donors. This is from the next morning where they all had their individual pens. The two donors were released the next morning but I’m still treating the anemic ewe. That’s a topic for another post someday…maybe.

Later on Thursday I took these photos. This is the pasture near the road just south of the house. You can see why putting the sheep out on the pasture is not the answer to getting them away from the barn. The pastures are saturated because the water doesn’t percolate in or run off fast enough. We are working with NRCS and hope to go forward with a plan for some pasture work that, in improving our summer irrigation management, might mitigate some of this issue as well.

View from the southeast corner at the road and the neighbor’s driveway.

We had a couple of days with less rain, but the winds last night were scary. The news reports are full of huge trees crushing cars and houses and taking out power lines in the nearby cities. We didn’t have that serious of a problem, but our one tree down took out this pipe. When I did chores this morning I discovered this and we had to shut off the water at the well.

This tree was already unhealthy and Dan had cut some of the trunks last year. Now the rest needed to go.

Does it sound as though I’m complaining throughout this post? I don’t mean it to sound that way. I’m actually glad that we are getting rain. I just hope that the reservoirs fill up and that there is more snow in the mountains.