The Great Flood (at the farm)

So many of you may know that we were flooded out at the farm.  For those of you who don't, this is what happened last Friday morning.  7 1/2" of rainfall wreaked a lot of havoc, especially to an area still accessed by gravel roads.  The farm is located in Adeline, IL (population 139 as of 2000 census) and uses Leaf River as the postal code.  Leaf River runs directly through the property and in all of granddad's years on and around the farm (all 83 years), the river has never overflowed the banks this much.

Now, before I get to the pictures, I want to tell a little of what went on in the hours before these pictures were taken.  Tim was on his way to the farm with the girls who spent several days with my mom and dad.  It had already stopped raining by this time, sometime between 2pm and 3pm.  Now the last 5 to 7 minutes of the trip is all on gravel roads.  Tim turned onto the first section of the gravel and ended up driving through a rough patch of flooded road.  Once he cleared that first patch of flooding having had water come in the car through the door, I guess (in his little Toyota Matrix), he realized that the next patch of road was worse and he had better not attempt to get through at the risk of getting stuck altogether.

He called me and I took our Suburban out to pick him up.  I got to the end of the lane (what you call a driveway that is .73 miles long), which already had about 50 ft of it under water, and I turned left to head out to Tim.  The river had already overflowed its bank and was cascading over the part of road ahead of me into the open field that lies about 5 feet lower than the road.  In the time it took for me to get to Tim and the girls and come back, that section of road had already caved in to where half the road was at least a foot lower than the other half with rushing water still ravaging the road.

We ended up taking some back roads to get beyond that caved in section of road, we parked the truck up the road by the one room school house and literally had to walk through upper thigh high water.  I carried Micah and Tim carried Eden as we carefully waded through the at least 100 foot section of flooded lane where I lost one of my brand new flip flops (the water rose almost 2 feet in less than half an hour).  Has the river no mercy?  Here are the pictures we took after we made it safely home.

Zooming in down the lane, you can see the mailbox that is across the street from the lane.  The water has not come that high yet.

This is looking to the right at the end of the lane where just beyond the trees is a bridge, and up the road from the bridge is the one room school house.

This is a picture to the left of the lane, the open field I mentioned earlier.  It would be nice to have before pictures to compare, but for those of you who have been here, you know what I am talking about.

This is one of the bean fields, as is the river you see beyond the beans.  The overflow of the river takes the path straight through the beans.  Knowing that the beans are at least a foot high right now, the water is at least that high on that lower field, and I would dare say twice that high if you were to measure it.

Tim and granddad walked down to see that bean field close up.  Anyone up for soggy beans? 

The next morning we took a walk down the lane hoping it had gone down some.  Even if it was the same thigh high water from the day before, Tim was going to wade through it to get to the library for me (I was reading the Above the Line series by Karen Kingsbury and needed the 4th book desperately).  We didn't need to go all the way down the lane to know it wasn't happening.

You see the ripples in the water?  The water is at least another 30 feet up the lane and is now making waves.  Tim would have had to full-on swim, and that would have gotten the first 3 books in that series wet, so Take Four would have to wait.  Humphf.  Safety first.  I guess.

Zooming in to the mailbox you can see that the river finally claimed the road.

We did manage to play a little and the kids were finding rocks and making a rock collection.  This was Eden's best rock.

On the way back to the house we stopped at the turkey feather.

We also stopped at the mud puddle that had this juicy worm swimming around in it, and we rescued it.  Do worms swim?  The picture isn't all that great, but this worm was fat and much to my surprise, Titus picked it up.  When he went to throw it into the grass, he must have gotten a bit spooked by the mini snake that he ended up throwing the worm right back into the water.  Funny.

The rest of these pictures are just to give you a tour of sorts from the bottom of the lane (as far as we can get with the water and all) all the way up to the house and the surrounding area.  Each photo is basically a new section of the lane.

Here is the beautiful tree that we wanted the tree house in.  The swings are here, but it also has a direct view of a portion of the lane that just could not be blocked.  Oh well.

I can't wait for you to see the after pictures of the water damage, so hang in there...it's almost 1am and I can't post it tonight, but ♫ there's always tomorrow ♫.  'Night all.