03/09/2026
To address everyone who says it's easy and to use our brains and dig a trench, put in a pipe, or build up our driveway seen here....
Hereās another clip and some more info. Note the extra helpers, several pumps, you can see the bucket of a machine quickly in the video on the right side, and one of the trenches draining. With what you see here and more that you donāt seeā¦the water still comes in faster.
FIRST - Believe it or not we are not just sitting here in our cozy Adirondack chairs watching and waiting for my over 100 year old building to flood. Insurance does NOT cover ground water so every cent to do with dealing with this is out of my pocket and every hour my husband is there is him not working or making money so no, we are not enjoying this. And YES we do own heavy equipment and indeed have dug many trenches. The sheer amount of water over takes it all at times, that is how flooding works. If you want to come check it out in the middle of the night when it goes from nothing to in my shop in no time at all despite the effort then great, come join the party and bring your extra pumps, some snacks and some of that eye cream for my husbands bags. I'll work on a time laps video of it for you all.
Second - This parking area you see here is not ours. Basically all the land here...It is NOT our property. We are land locked on both sides and the back. This road which is a public snowmobile trail at this time of year is a right of way owned by the Tamarack that we are not allowed to just dig into that at our free will causing accidents etc. If it were as easy as digging any which way we wanted then sure lets do it.
THIRD - There is in fact town and DOT drainage here (remember the lost cat that I found in said drain that I posted photos of two summers ago...same drain). It is old, it freezes and clogs. The town is supposed to fix this and are supposedly working on it.
FOURTH - For those of you to say I just need to move. Okay let's think here for a min how simple that is. You find me the available Main Street space in Inlet or Old Forge that is big enough... I'll wait for all of my options. And no, I did not know this was such an issue when opening my business here.
Seeing a two second video does not show everything going on here. It does not show the round the clock unclogging of pumps, shoveling, bringing down machinery, endless neighbors, town employees, and locals all lending a hand. It happens then everyone else forgets it because it's a few days a year and it doesn't directly affect them.
So believe it or not a LOT is being done to try to avoid this. Believe it or not 30 yards of fill to build up the parking area will not actually SOLVE this issue it will however divert the water to the next easiest path which is the side of my old ass building and I'd have the joy of it flooding from there. It would also seriously flood my neighbors house. If you have not been here you actually have no idea how much water actually comes down from this mountain, this is a huge mountain.
There's a lot more I could add but I can tell you don't enjoy paying for this s**t every year and buying endless pumps etc. If you can believe it this store is not making me rich. Handmade is expensive to buy and the markup is not like most retail businesses. BUT I love my store. I love my over 400 artist. I LOVE MY CUSTOMERS. For now I will keep fighting this damn mountain with my amazing husband to keep my store. So pardon me while I go park a chair by my lake and watch it grow and fill out my loan applications to build my new store š
To all my awesome customers and friends, I love you ā¤ļø
