Winter Challenge

Last week was a bit of a winter challenge.

There are some winter challenges that people participate in for fun. Like Polar Bear Challenges, in which people, wearing only standard swimsuits, plunge or swim in a body of water in the middle of winter.

Our winter challenge was not like that.

Beginning on Thanksgiving evening and continuing through last week, it snowed and snowed and snowed and the snow piled up. Our neighbor who has kindly cleared our driveway for us with his tractor-snowblower for more than five years has been MIA. He lives down the road and around the corner and we don’t know him very well beyond “Dale who takes care of our driveway for us.” We consider his service as a gift, not an obligation, but we are a bit concerned because we don’t know if he’s visiting family in New England or if something has befallen him. We’ve been very busy (as I will describe below) but we hope to call him soon and ask if he’s ok.

The snow was getting so deep that if we didn’t get our driveway cleared, it would become impassable. EJ tried to get our little walk-behind snowblower running early last week but was unsuccessful. It would almost start but then die. The fuel leaked out. He has to troubleshoot it, but meanwhile, the snow was falling and piling up so we decided that we needed to buy a new snowblower. EJ did some online research and then went to the home improvement store to buy one on his way to work on Wednesday. The one he really wanted would have had to be ordered and we couldn’t wait several days for it to arrive so EJ settled for an adequate one. As the saying goes, “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

EJ almost made it home from work in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Almost, but not quite. He got stuck halfway up the driveway. He walked the rest of the way up to the house and went to bed. Getting stuck is not a desirable thing, but I’m very, very thankful that EJ got stuck AFTER he bought the snowblower instead of before. Having to shovel our long driveway out by hand would have been a nightmare. This is a photo I took of the truck in the driveway. You can see t-posts along the driveway. they are there so we can find the driveway in the winter.

After some sleep, EJ got the new snowblower out of the back of the truck and began snow-blowing the driveway. Since there was no way he could get the driveway cleared before he had to leave for work, he took a vacation day. EJ got half the driveway snow-blowed before he became too exhausted to continue. He’s been fighting a respiratory infection for several weeks and hasn’t had much energy. On Friday EJ got the rest of the driveway snow-blowed. Then he and I took shovels down to the truck and began to shovel the snow from around the truck where the snowblower couldn’t reach. EJ was able to get the truck unstuck and up to the house. We took Saturday off to rest.

Saturday night the temperatures begin to rise and the snow turned to drizzle. It was supposed to begin raining late Sunday afternoon. Warm temperatures in winter are very bad because the melting snow/rain refreezes into ice and makes our driveway VERY treacherous. Sunday morning, before the rain started, we went to the grocery and farm stores to pick up a few items we needed. Mostly we needed cat food because we were low. Timmy doesn’t like it if I’m not quick enough to feed him. He definitely would not be happy if he ran out of food.

The roads were good and we had no problem getting to the stores. All went well until EJ tried to drive up the driveway. He’s an excellent driver who knows how to drive in snow. However, the warm temperatures had turned the deep snow into deep slippery slush and we got stuck again. We walked up the driveway carrying the perishable items and left the rest in the truck. We took time to eat lunch and then headed down the driveway with our shovels to free the truck. We got it unstuck but a little further it got stuck again. It couldn’t get traction in the slush. Shoveling down to bare ground, we made a path for the truck to travel up to the house. We unloaded the rest of the groceries and then EJ snowblowed the driveway again to get rid of as much slushy snow as he could. When he was finished, we drove the truck back down and parked it at the bottom of the driveway so he could get out to go to work on Monday (today) if the driveway became treacherously icy. It was actually unnecessary to park the truck down there because the warm temperatures melted almost all the snow in the driveway. The driveway is now bare ground rather than snowy, slushy, or icy. But better safe than sorry.

There is a chance of rain/snow tonight. Tomorrow is supposed to be another warm-ish day with temperatures in the high 30s. The temperatures will get cold again and we will be back to snow.

Deep snow is a challenge, especially with our driveway. However, snow is better than ice.