Well, it was a white Christmas for sure.

In the past month, there was a statewide blizzard warning.  It left drifts from waist deep to neck deep all over town.  Luckily, just days before, I brought the tractor up from the farm and put the big snowblower on it it and parked in my garage.  Lifesaver.  During the first big storm, I went downtown at 11:00pm to clear off the first foot or so from the storm.  I figured getting more off now, meant easier going in the morning.  I found one of the sidewalks downtown almost bare.  Few wisps of snow.  The South side of the building had a knee deep drift running the entire sidewalk.  It took nearly an hour to clean this off.

The next morning, I saw a huge plow tailing at the end of the driveway but I could see tire tracks from last night in the middle of the driveway.  Nice….until I saw the back window and could not see the front of the car.  It had all drifted waist deep from the door to the car and to the garage.  I cleaned out the driveway and needed to take some coffee to People’s Bank, our downtown neighbor, customer, and bank.  Remember the knee deep snow I moved?  It was replaced by a drift that was neck deep on me.  The wind-swept side was a solid waist deep.

I refused to take the shovel out of the car and went back home.  It took nothing to swallow my pride and decided that it people drive their lawn tractor to the gas station in the Summer, I could surely drive a snowblower to where it was needed.  7 blocks up, and 2 over, it really was a quick drive.  There was a few intersections that I needed to turn the blower on to get past the piles of crud in fear of getting stuck.  Still, even with this power, I could push my way into a drift, hop off, then use the shovel to knock down the edges and try again.  It took a good 2.5 hours to clear this little area.

Fast forward to Christmas.  The Moon family came the weekend before to have Christmas and celebrate Mason’s birthday with us.  This was the first time in I don’t know how many years that we didn’t travel for once.  Instead of the usual camping experience in our house, they rented the hotel from Trailside Lodging and loved it.  We also met them for a great gravy covered breakfast from the Uptown Cafe.  We had a great time, and a nice low-key Christmas.

Nearly a week later, the forecast had another ‘epic’ storm on the way.  The predictions changed daily, but it sounded icy and deep.  I decided to fire up the generator, get fresh gas and find the cord.  I had plans for wiring in the furnace, I still should have gotten the connection ready.  Luckily, the power never went out.

During the first few flurries, I kept up with the driveway and sidewalk.  On Christmas morning, there was at least 8″ plus drifts.  I got our driveway done quickly, helped my dad clear his then went downtown in fear of the sidewalk again.  At least, the drift was narrow, but still about chest deep.  Most of the sidewalk was quite low, as in the max height of the snowblower.  I got on the sidewalk, and had to start at the Uptown’s door in order to reach my spot.  I got quite a good path going before I hit the drift.  Had to hop off once and knock it down.  After that, I was able to get through it and reach the corner.  From there, I was able to do laps up the sidewalk, even clearing the path past Uptown more.  During this, Wayne had shown up with his snowblower as well.  I had moved around the corner to avoid blowing snow then found him helping clear the last of my sidewalk in appreciation.  I had the same issue on the East side, I had to work my way down the sidewalk, past a pair of businesses from the curb cut to get into my area again.  Luckily, about an inch more fell during the rest of the day.

It is deep, the farm is at a standstill.  I did recently burn a large amount of barn out in the cold, the day before the first snow came.  Bonfires do keep the chill off.  Things are buttoned up and stored for winter.  Once spring and warmth returns, we’ll be back at it.  The next wave of crib work will make sure huge and noticeable improvements.

No Comments »