It was the dog barking that alerted me to the figure trudging across the field in front of the house. It was the farmer – a big man who normally walks with the swagger of one who knows his worth, counted in hectares.

Not today. He moved slowly, stopping every so often to bend and scoop the sodden clay, shaking it from his hands as if hot to touch.

His whole demeanour was one of dejection. He did the same in the four fields he owns surrounding me, then, with a last look back at all, got in his car and drove away.

Just a few weeks ago, he and his grandson, in separate tractors, had been seeding the land, already late because of the constant rain.

Within a week of doing so, the storms – the orages – hit, and the soil first blackened, and then swirled into pools with the water expanding them each day and night.

Then, as the land was battered with wave upon wave of night and day storms, it loosened from its once solid moorings and swept down to the ditches and roads.

Mud smeared the routes as tropical rain ran in rivers through it in a headlong rush to some long departed river.

And somewhere, in the midst of all that seething mess, the precious seeds, his and the other farmers’ livelihoods, were dying or dead as they raced in the course.

In other fields, hailstones as big as golf balls punched holes in the already late emerging sunflowers – the symbol of heat and languid days in France’s southern outposts.

Punched the frail, fresh shoots into the ground, leaving many without hope of survival.

Under their plastic tunnels, the strawberries found little shelter as the repetitive, torrential rain ran down the tunnels between, insinuating itself into the very roots, and drowning them in their birth.

Further north, the precious vines of Bordeaux were decimated as the cruel winds, hail and rain forced its way onwards to almost every corner of France.

Mired in my own misery of seemingly nightly floods streaming through my kitchen, this malevolent fist pummelling down felt strictly personal.

It was targeting me – another vicious attack to leave me crying: "What bloody more?" as time and time again I mopped the floor, draping towel after towel when I ran out of breath and will.

As the bookcase plinths mottled, buckled and paint "blew" I was too obsessed with the spores growing within their sodden facades to think of any others.

And then, between the mopping and silent wailing, I raised my head enough to see the pictures and the videos of all that was happening just around my corner.

Do not believe the myth that French farmers wallow in the luxury of EU protection and grants. Yes, there are many financial aids in protectionist France but EU help applies to all its countries as the UK is now discovering.

A season such as this will wipe out many small agriculteurs, will damage many others and will force prices up and hit every single person.

Insurance for such disasters comes with a hefty price and many farmers have chanced to luck, unable to pay the premiums, doing the equivalent of third party only.

All now rests on a meeting of Ministers next week to decide which regions should be declared a "catastrophe naturelle." This is vitally important, for farmers and homeowners alike.

Once an area is labelled such, insurance is waved through without too much investigation if a commune is listed. The local maire has to state such and one has ten days to make one’s claim.

Normally it is five days from the incident and today I have sent a declaration and photographs to my own insurance company to see what, if anything, I can reclaim.

My livelihood is not at stake; my mud churned land and its new pools are merely aesthetically displeasing, not disastrous; the knowledge that field drains are now needed is financially daunting/impossible, but if not done it will only mean I keep mopping not that I go bankrupt and lose everything I own.

In a break from the sodden towels and storm to come, I got into my car and took a little drive around to open my eyes to what was happening about me.

Fosses (ditches) had caved in on themselves with the weight of mud slides; fields no longer had the neat lines and waves of produce expected in this June month, but merged drunkenly into each other; water ran beside my car as I navigated new fords opened on familiar roads.

Wheat fields lay flat to the ground, no proud, golden heads to be seen shimmering in a gentle, hot breeze.

Everywhere…silence; all farm machinery stopped; laid up under shelters, protected from the fists of hail.

And, dotted in fields here and there, a lone man, car left on the verge, often dog at his side, walking his lands, stooping down now and then to pick up handfuls of worthless soil.

There is a feeling and a murmur that this Spring/Summer has marked a seismic change.

Suddenly global warming has hit disturbingly close to home.