There is a particular sound a croft makes when the water isn't going where it should. It's a sort of quiet, determined trickle, and it turns out to be the sound of a problem.
After days of rain on Saturday, we found the water gathering against the base of the new stable. Tea-coloured and very calm, it sat along the timber wall and over the gravel edge as though it had every right to be there.
The stable is new, and still being finished (you can read how it came to be in Part One: A Stable Business). It had also been months since we'd had a proper downpour, so this was the first real test of how water behaves on this part of the croft. The answer was: not well.
The culprit
Following the water uphill, we found the ditch beside the old oak. Over the dry months, silt and grass had quietly settled into it, and it had stopped being a ditch in any useful sense. When the rain arrived, the water had nowhere to go but towards the stable.
Nothing dramatic, then. No collapsed pipe, no mystery. A ditch had slowly filled in while we weren't looking, as ditches do.
The wee man to the rescue
Two of us, two spades and a good deal of mud. The wee man took charge of the channel by the oak, boots sunk in and spade swinging, with the air of someone who had been waiting all year for a reason to get properly filthy.
We cleared the silt, then dug a simple trench to carry the water away from the stable and into the burn. It took about three hours. The satisfying part came at the end, when the water finally found its way and began to move.
What we learned
There was no damage, just a clean-up and a lesson. The trench is a temporary fix, and something more permanent will follow in time. For now, it's doing its job.
If you're building on a croft or a smallholding, our advice is to look at your drainage before the rain does it for you. Walk the ditches in late summer and clear them before the autumn weather arrives. We didn't, and the wee man has the muddy boots to prove it.
More stories from the croft can be found in The Croft Journal.