Flood, 20. 1. 2020

A week after the fire we get a little bit of rain – the first for weeks, really.
It dampens the remaining nests of embers and we get a little bit of water into our tanks.
A week later we get a few millimeters more, and to our surprise a tinge of green appears. Our pasture starts to recover!

Suddenly there are also some small birds and some very noisy frogs, and some butterflies, and a little wild Lilly flowers under the trees behind the house.

These are things we have not seen for a year or more.

And then, three weeks after the fire, it starts to RAIN. We get 80 mm rain and everything floods.

It is still raining heavily when we race down to the dam and find our (drought located) diesel pump already standing in water. We frantically disconnect the hoses and yank the pump to higher ground.

Isn’t this wonderful?

Within an hour the dam rises half a meter.

Now it is back at the level it was in spring, when we decided that we could no longer afford to irrigate the vineyard. The windmill can suck water again. Our main diesel pump, too.

We are at back to square one, which is a huge advancement.

The little dam behind the house, (which in our planning, before the drought) was reserved for firefighting and wildlife only, fills up a little bit, too.

Fortunately the soil is now no longer totally bare and erosion isn’t too bad. Still, a lot of ash is washed into the dams. Shortly afterwards we find tortoises leaving the little dam. The water seems to be too polluted for them now. We take them down to the main dam which we hope has better water quality. The frogs and other aquatic life we don’t know….

But for now: The fire danger is finally over.