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Sunday, Nov. 18, 2001. On Thursday we had a huge storm and it flooded everywhere. We knew that our land was NOT in a flood plain but still we were a bit worried. We had just enlarged our dry creek and our camper was not sitting too far from it. Also, we had portable toilets delivered on that very day. We called off the work session on Saturday because the forecast said there would be more rain (although it really didn't rain on Saturday) and we had some other house-related projects to work on "off-land."
To our relief there was no major damage or change to anything on our land, except that the pond was extremely full and there was still water trickling in through the dry creek, 3 days after the rain. We didn't cover the cob wall but there was very little damage to it, except that some of the clary from the surface was washed away by the continuous rain, exponsing much of straw and sand.
So we continued building on the wall and the northern foundation. Clay was wet and sticky, which made it very easy to mix and make cob. However, one unpleasant surprise was the straw - we knew that some of these bales could be rotten when we bought it (we paid little money for it, as those were all that were available locally at the time), but it turned out a lot of it was rotten. Also, although we stacked them up on wooden palletes fireants had found them and were nesting in them. Ari got bit serveral places when he tried to grab a bale. Darn. We'll have to go and get more.
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It's a bit hard to see in this picture, but a lot of straw and sand particles are visible on the surface. The continuous rain had washed away the clay. Really not a big deal, but since normal rain wouldn't even make this big of a difference, this showed us how much it had really rained. |
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Terri using a "cobber's thumb" to attach new cob loaves to the wall. A cobber's thumb is just a little wood branch that we use to "sew" straw to the existing wall so that the new layer is seemlessly woven together into the wall. |
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This is not construction-related, but this is our pond, that has filled up a lot because of the storm. We've never seen it this high, even in the spring! |