The howling freakin' arctic.

[smoogatz]

Crazy weather out here in west-central (E.C.).

[sybylla]

1. No kidding!

Unfortunately, our snow plower is Amish so he doesn't work on Sunday. That's not usually a problem but of course poor MadAsHell had a customer who needed him in their plant yesterday. Took him an hour and a half to shovel through the 3' tall by 10' wide by 50' long drift outside our garage door so he could get the truck out. Drift blew back in within about an hour after he left.

This is getting ridiculous. We're about to have to fill our fuel tank for the 3rd time this winter. We've never before need more than three fills a winter. The snow is drifted and plowed so flipping high around the house and outbuildings that I don't know how the delivery guy will get his hose to the tank. I guess I'd better start shoveling now.

[smoogatz]

2. Snowblower.

We've got about 80' of driveway and 60' of sidewalk, plus the periodic 2' snow-berm at the end of the drive thrown up by the city plow. I couldn't get to the grocery store if we hadn't invested in a snowblower. Next time I'm getting one that mounts on a lawn tractor.

[sybylla]

3. Snowblower would take all day for us

Granted, it's faster than shoveling but we rarely need to do it.

We live in the country - wide open farm country - with a 500 ft circle drive and a large parking area between buildings. A big part of the drive always blows in deep while another part stays fairly open, but all the snow dumps in front of the buildings. It's why we have a truck - because even if we can get out of the drive way, we probably can't get to town in a car. Our roads are plowed last if at all.

If our wonderful Amish neighbors didn't trade snowplowing services in exchange for renting a couple of acres from us, we'd never get out until thaw.