Skelgill Mill, by Agnes Earnshaw

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

The snow had lain on the fells since late January, and when the thaw came in March 1947 it came all at once. Walter Ivison had kept Skelgill Mill working through two wars and he did not mean to lose it to the beck. By noon on the first wet day he had drawn the sluice gate fully and wedged it with an iron bar, so that the race would carry off as much water as it could. He and his son carried the sacks of meal from the ground floor up the ladder to the bin loft, sixty of them, resting on every fourth rung. He took the leather belts off the drive shafts, rolled them and hung them from the beams, because wet leather stretched and never came right. Old doors from the cart shed were laid against the bottom of the mill door and weighted with millstones too worn to grind. Last of all he let the hens out of their pen behind the wheelhouse, since hens had more sense than to drown if left to themselves, and he lit a lamp in the top window so that the farm across the valley would know the mill was still standing. Then he sat down on the stairs with his boots on to wait.

List five things Walter does to prepare for the flood.