It seems like there is always a project in the works around here. If we don't think up one, Mother Nature will come up with one for us. A couple of years ago we put in a new driveway. We had been sharing a driveway with Mike's family but when his mother sold her house and moved in with us, we decided to add our own driveway so that we didn't need to deal with an easement. When you live on a farm like we do, you generally have a gravel driveway and it is a part of your property upkeep.
Now, we had a major flood here in 2010. Then, we got another gully-washer in 2013. However, since we put in the new driveway, we've had three major flooding rains which washed out our driveway. The driveway was completed in September of 2018. Then, in early October this happened:
So, we added more rock and made repairs. It was frustrating and it was quite expensive following on the heels of just completing the building of the driveway. Every time it rained, we worried that it would flood. Then, in February of 2019 it did. And again, we had this:
So, Mike hired a guy to come in and shore up the sides of our culvert with concrete. That way we knew that it would hold the pipe in place and should hold the rock in place as well.
Yet, every time we drove across the culvert, we could look off into the creek and see all the rock and gravel that had been washed away just sitting there staring at us as if Mother Nature was mocking us.
We sort of became like folks on the coast during hurricane weather. We would watch closely any time that a heavy rain or flooding was predicted. In August of 2019, we had a big rain and there was some washing. So, Mike and a neighbor lined the entire top of the driveway across the culvert with bags of concrete mix. That helped and there wasn't nearly such gully washing nor loss of gravel when we got a major rain in March of this year.
Then, along comes September of this year. At the beginning of the month, we got a major rain. A flash flood. Major flooding.
It broke the fence that was across the creek holding in the neighbor's cattle. It washed our gravel away almost as bad as it had almost a year before. It was frustrating and heartbreaking.
Deep ruts were left in the driveway at the culvert. Loads of gravel were deposited in the creek joining the other small fortune of gravel that was already lining the creekbed instead of our driveway. Once again, we added a couple of loads of gravel to smooth out the surface so that we could drive across. Then, only a dozen or so days later, we got a downpour. Three to four inches fell within a matter of forty minutes. It was devastating.
This time the neighbor's newly repaired fence wasn't just broken. It had washed down the creek and could not be found. The picture below shows the drainage that comes off the hill and beside our house before traveling down the field to join the creek. I've never seen such a rush of water in my life.
Mike and I felt defeated. Not only had we poured thousands of dollars into our driveway, we had seen it wash down the creek and line the creekbed where we couldn't obtain it till the weather was chip dry like it gets sometimes in July or August. We also needed to repair it once again so that we could enter and leave our home. So, that meant pour more money into this driveway.
We knew that we should be counting our blessings and lifting prayers of thanksgiving that our home is fine and nobody was harmed. It just seemed really hard to do consistently when it felt like we were getting kicked in the teeth. However, we took a deep breath and did just that for a temporary fix. Yet, we know that we had to do something more permanent rather than keep throwing thousands of dollars down the creek. We prayed and gave it some thought. Tomorrow, I'll show you what we wound up doing.
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