Posts Tagged ‘shoveling snow’
Our Comeuppance
There isn’t a vast amount of international perspective that I can refer to from my limited travels to other countries of the world, but I believe it’s been enough for me to understand that my home country doesn’t deserve to boast about our democracy as if it is the beacon of greatness above all others.
In fact, I have come to believe that our form of government is proving to be a failure. Our democracy isn’t working. Voting for individuals to represent us is supposed to give power to THE PEOPLE. If the majority of people in this country don’t want our government to bomb boats or commandeer oil tankers from Venezuela, our representatives should have sway in the actions of the current administration.
If we don’t want ICE agents to wear masks and travel in packs, driving in unmarked vehicles to nab citizens off the streets without legitimate charges or warrants, THE PEOPLE should be able to persuade our elected officials to adhere to our laws.
Judges on the Supreme Court should be ethical and unbiased. When it becomes obvious they are not, THE PEOPLE should have a way to ensure that our government officials in each branch are being held accountable.
I admit that I once thought our democracy was better than most of the governments in the world. I’m embarrassed that I thought poorly of populations that allowed atrocities to occur by their leaders, or corruption to run rampant in their systems of governance.
Well, I now can understand it when people around the world feel the citizens of the United States are responsible for the inappropriate actions of our government. We thought we could rely on the checks and balances of our form of democracy to keep the wishes of THE PEOPLE in place. I’m afraid it’s not working.
We, the people, have made this mess. It appears we are getting some comeuppance.
At least my ATV and plow are working well again. We probably gained 6 or 7 inches of new snow from the last system. There was no evidence of my boot tracks from Tuesday night on the driveway yesterday morning.
That’s my path through the new snow upon returning from the barn after feeding the horses. After plowing the driveway, I moved to pulling snow off the roof in the two problem spots. While shoveling away the mess that had been created on our front steps, Cyndie texted that we would be receiving feed for the horses in around half an hour.
That meant I needed to switch focus and get down to the barn to dig out the big doors and slide them open. One of the doors wouldn’t budge. It took some creative persuasion to eventually bust it free, and I got it done just in time to see the huge red Gertens Garden Center truck coming up the driveway.
I had tried to plow that circle around the hay shed extra wide in advance of a hay delivery sometime in the near future. I wasn’t thinking of the feed delivery. The last few times, the driver parked on the road and drove his forklift up the driveway. The driver yesterday had never been here before. He decided to back out to the road and bring it up on the forklift.
He wasn’t confident that the big truck wouldn’t slide sideways. I’m happy he chose the safer option.
I’m feeling a lot less cocky about everything these days.
.
.
Pushing Snow
After a day of clearing more snow, it became glaringly obvious to me that not having to deal with much snowy weather for the last two years has left me way out of practice. Day two of the post-storm clean-up included some roof raking, deck shoveling, and hand shoveling the area in front of the shop garage, since I have yet to remedy the issues with the ATV plow setup.
Gladly, Cyndie came to my aid with the last bit of driveway shoveling, just as I was running on fumes. The killer for me is working the roof rake with my arms over my head, especially with one bum shoulder. It’s exhausterating, to coin a custom word.
It felt like a bit of an insult to receive a fresh dusting of flakes before we’d finished the driveway shoveling. I’d almost forgotten what it was like when snow and cold were the norm at this latitude.
It could snow a little almost every day, and people just get used to there being a coating of snow to navigate on foot or by car.
I really should fix up the plow situation today because there still remains plowing to be done down to the barn and around the hay shed. When I finish that, we can resume clearing out the hay shed of the rest of the bales of moldy hay.
When I clear significant snow this early in the season, it is important to push it well beyond the edges so there will be room for the next snowy event. I will need to accommodate wide turns around the hay shed because there is a delivery of fresh bales sometime in the near future. That means pushing snow well into the grass around the corners.
Seems pretty obvious what my priority for the day should be.
A shot of yesterday’s sunset…
…and the 3/4 moon reflecting the sunlight that was dropping below our horizon.
.
.
Multiple Failures
Yesterday was a failure for me in two ways. My ill-conceived attempt to simplify the connection of the winch hook to the plow blade proved woefully insufficient. To distract me from that frustration, I turned on the Vikings football game and was faced with a profound embarrassment for the team and all of its fans.
It looked like we probably got around 5-6 inches of snow accumulation from Saturday’s storm. The ground isn’t frozen solid yet, and what little residual warmth still exists was making the base layer just sticky enough to be annoying. It stuck to the plow blade and to the shovels. It is such a draining tedium when half a shovel-full stays on the shovel after every attempt to toss it.
I have needed to plow so infrequently over the last two winters that I guess I’m out of practice. I forgot how much the nylon rope on my winch stretches as it gets repeatedly snugged with a constant back and forth from lifting and dropping the blade. The added weight of snow sticking to the blade exacerbated the issue.
The kicker that ultimately caused me to give up trying was that the mechanism to pull a pin back, allowing the blade to be angled, stopped working. I assumed it was frozen with packed ice and snow, so I parked the Grizzly back in the garage to be dealt with later.
That left me doing more hand shoveling than I would have liked, but I got enough done to receive our guests for brunch with the place looking satisfactorily welcoming.
Today, I will be giving the winch lift issue the time and attention it deserves to resolve it. I’m not sure if the problem with the pin for blade-angle adjustment was an isolated incident or something more concerning. The mechanism was used when we bought the ATV, and that was 13 winters ago. It won’t be a big shock if something’s just plum worn out.
Like any good glutton for punishment, I turned on the football game after our guests left. Ouch. Seriously, ouch. It was painful to witness. The one positive I can take from the spectacle of the offense’s epic ineffectiveness is that I have no reason to look for entertainment in watching them play for the rest of the season.
I’d rather settle into my favorite recliner and finish some of the books that I’m currently juggling.
.
.
Delayed Escape
I’m still at home this morning. The snowstorm that the weather service named “Lola” created more work than I could complete in a day. And it was miserable work, indeed. On most occasions, I actually enjoy clearing snow. Yesterday was not one of those days.
First of all, we awoke to more than 8 inches of heavy, windblown snow plastering everything. Beneath that coating of white was a layer of slush left from the gradual transition from rain to sleet to snow. All of that rain had nowhere to go since the ground is frozen and once again, hydrostatic pressure pushed water up through the concrete floor in the basement or along the block walls and soaked all the area rugs.
Cyndie said she would tend to the horses so I could get a start on plowing. It would have been easier to stay with her. The wind was ferocious and new snow was still falling. My goal was to try just breaking through with a couple of passes to make it a bit easier to do when it stopped snowing. It was barely possible. The machine and I got coated with a complete layer of sticky snow as I tried blasting my way through the deep drifts with the blade only lowered part of the way down.
After breakfast, I was using a roof rake to pull down the giant drift overhanging our front door and letting Asher play with his favorite ball while dragging his 30’ leash behind him. I noticed he had stepped away from the ball and I called to him to command his return. He gave me that look of mischief, turned, and ran full speed the length of the driveway.
I knew right where he was headed, to the neighbors across the road, where he started barking ferociously at their cat. I needed to trudge through the deep snow on the unplowed road to climb the rise to their driveway and was completely exhausted when I finally reached him. The ONLY redeeming aspect of this angering situation was that I got to visit briefly with our neighbor, Eileen.
Walking the equally arduous distance back in my seething frustration left me too tired to finish shoveling away the snow I’d pulled off the roof. I went in for lunch and waited for it to stop snowing while Cyndie took up the task of clearing the mess of snow in front of the garage doors. Every scoop of the shovel would end up sticking.
It’s hard to plow by the house because there’s nowhere to push the snow, so hand shoveling is usually easier. When there is almost a foot of snow, nothing is easier.
I made reasonable progress cleaning up the rest of the driveway with the plow in the late afternoon. The township plow on the road left quite a thick mess I needed to hand shovel because it was too much for the Grizzly to push. At least the driver was nice enough to be cautious around our mailbox this time.
Looking back toward the barn, you can see by the snow line in the trees how that hill protects from the north wind. The whipping wind had cleaned all of the upper branches, but the lower half of all the trees still held snow.
I won’t be surprised today to find blowing snow has drifted into the driveway again. I’d like to head up north before dark, so I intend to do the absolute minimum of additional plowing or shoveling with that in mind. Best laid plans, and all that… Wish me luck.
.
.
Nuisance Amounts
So far this winter (even though winter solstice is still nine days away), we have only been receiving what I call nuisance amounts of snowfall. It’s barely enough to justify shoveling, yet too much to leave on steps and walkways. Last week, when Asher and I got caught in that epic snow-burst, we couldn’t see the barn. In the end, so little snow accumulated that it was all gone two days later.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Yesterday morning, I spent a few minutes clearing the driveway closest to the house with a shovel.
I like having the cleaner pavement, but that minimal covering of snow isn’t enough to deserve firing up the ATV to plow, and I’m not inclined to push the shovel the rest of the length of the driveway to the road. I saw the township plow go by on our road, so I carried a shovel when walking Asher. That big blade didn’t throw up enough snow to make any difference.
I shoveled what little there was anyway. So now the top and the bottom of our driveway are cleared, and the middle is just a series of tire tracks and footprints until we get enough sun to evaporate whatever snow remains.
Since the temperature was forecast to drop precipitously overnight, I made sure the horses had plenty of good hay to stoke their internal furnaces. They are decidedly picky about one of the batches of bales we’ve been trying to use up on them, and they regularly ignore any amount that we mix into the hay nets. I chose to dump some of those dregs out on the ground where we are building a hay path for traction in advance of future icy conditions. That way, I could fill the bag exclusively with hay they prefer.
What’s the first thing that happens?
Mia comes over and starts eating the hay I dumped out.
I don’t blame her. Free of the netting, she can dive in and more easily scrounge out any desired nibbles mixed in with the stringy grasses she doesn’t like. She probably thinks of them as “nuisance amounts.”
.
.
Not Fooled
April. Really?
Fool me once…
I thought I was going to shovel snow. APRIL FOOLS!
It was more like cement. Maybe stucco. Plaster?
Just to add to the ruse, nature makes it look gorgeous.
I fear this mess will be un-plowable. How fast will it melt? I’m going to clean up around the edges and see how conditions change after the sun shines on it for an hour or two.
I don’t think the horses see much humor in this kind of practical joke. Our trees don’t think it’s very funny, either.
My new zero-turn mower is due to arrive on Tuesday.
Happy April everyone!
.
.
Nests Removed
After a long delay in my attention to the project of mounting our surveillance camera, I dug back into it yesterday. That digging uncovered the presence of six old hornet nests and one large bird’s nest, none of which I realized existed under the shop entrance roof.
One of the primary things slowing me down in committing to this installation has been the issue of how I would get power to the camera. I decided to pull down the light fixture to gain access to the AC wiring. Deep inside the cover of that light fixture was where one of those wasp nests I didn’t know about was hidden.
I’m happy to be dealing with these nests in the winter when no wasps are present.
Some shopping for supplies will need to happen so I can add an outdoor outlet to the circuit of the light fixture. I will take this opportunity to also add a switch for that outdoor light fixture up over the door to the shop. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why that light never came on. Then I discovered it was directly wired to a circuit breaker that was in the “off” position. There was no switch. Oops.
As I was putting the ladder away after returning from feeding the horses, I noticed the ice mound under the eave in front of the garage was soft enough that I could break it up and finally remove it. One thing led to another and I decided to also shovel the soft snow from the giant mound that remained on the pavement. It would be good to open up that space for plowing the new snow predicted to fall in the next few days.
Shoveling that enormous pile of snow proved to be a bigger task than I should have tried to muscle my way through. I felt a pang in my ribs as I tossed one too many heavy shovel-full and that put an end to moving any more snow. I’m hoping that by stopping right away, the damage will be mild and not infringe on my ability to shovel when this next storm hits.
Today might end up being a day of more desk work than physical activity. It’s not like I needed an excuse to work on our tax returns or anything.
.
.
Pushing Snowbanks
Just have a couple things to share before I rush off to catch the next episode of our latest binge-watch. Cyndie and I randomly chose “Suspicion” on Apple TV+ a few days ago with no advance information about the show. We are nearing the end and find ourselves struggling to explain what seems like plot holes to us. We keep wanting to see another episode to find out if the things we are questioning end up making sense once all is revealed. Maybe not the best reason to get hooked on a story, but it works for us during winter months when Cyndie can’t do much else.
We are being warned by weather forecasters that seriously cold temperatures are headed our way this weekend and could linger for almost two weeks. Under Cyndie’s wise counsel, I put blankets on the horses yesterday while their coats were good and dry. Snow was predicted overnight and that contributed to my decision to put blankets on yesterday even though it was a nice sunny day.
I took some time in the afternoon to shovel the shoulder of a section of the driveway to push back the snowbank. It feels really rewarding to reclaim the full width of the pavement (on one side, at least) and to open the way for easy plowing of the next big snowfall.
We had a dusting of just under an inch of snow on Wednesday. I’m actually hoping there will be enough new snow out there this morning to justify plowing. I’m looking forward to seeing how much of an improvement clearing snow will be where I’ve pushed back the snowbank.
Since the shoveling is a little tedious, I had plenty of time to ponder how I could collaborate with my welder to create an offset plow blade that would hang off the back of the ATV to push the snowbank back a few feet. If it were even possible to do, the Grizzly would likely not have enough traction to knock back the snow on uphill portions of the drive. It is hard enough to push away snow with my front plow going up the hills.
An offset back blade could work on the downhill runs I bet, though.
Yesterday’s picture was of how the sun looked first thing in the morning through the low clouds. By evening, the setting sun was painting a much more vibrant set of colors.
.
.
Beating Expectation
With 6″ of heavy new snow on the driveway and more falling yesterday morning, I figured I better plow before it got to be more snow than the ATV could push. While shoveling the front steps and walkway I discovered the snow was stickier than I’d expected, which threatened to make the plowing job too much for the Yamaha Grizzly.
Just as I suspected, the snow wasn’t rolling off the blade as fast as it was piling up in front of it. On the uphill climbs, it became too much to push and I had to back up to make a fresh start around the piles. The driveway was becoming a mess that I feared I wouldn’t be able to clear over the tall banks. I bought some time by focusing on clearing around our mailbox and at the start of the driveway. Then it was time to try making my way up the full length again.
The third time was the charm. I made incremental progress with each pass and was able to maintain a high enough speed that the sticky snow was finally flying off the plow blade by the end. I was surprised that I had been able to clear so much heavy snow as well as I ultimately did.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The plowed portion continues to narrow compared to the full width of the pavement but it is wide enough for a vehicle. The old Grizzly deserves more respect than I was giving it.
I’ll give myself a little credit for being able to maintain forward progress as the ATV slid sideways against the weight of snow on the blade.
Around the middle of the day, we caught a break in precipitation that showed up on the radar as an isolated pocket surrounded by snow all around us.
As the hours wore on we received more snow but it was warm enough that most of it seemed to be melting on contact. Much of the driveway remained snow-free and very wet. Where it wasn’t clear to the pavement, another inch or two were getting added.
There remains plenty to clean up today and temperatures are expected to remain below freezing for a while so it will be a challenge shoveling what was soft yesterday but frozen solid now.
I’m feeling renewed sympathy for the people of Buffalo, NY, who had to dig out from under multiple feet of snow. It is getting hard for me to throw the shovels full over the growing piles along the edges. I don’t know how they have dealt with shoveling three or four times the amount I’m facing.
Maybe I’ll get lucky today and the level of difficulty shoveling will beat my expectations like the plowing did yesterday.
Wish I was feeling luckier than I actually do this morning.
.
.
No Break
Even on a day when no snow fell from the sky, snow fell and I needed to shovel. I can’t catch a break.
The roof of the shop garage is not a concern for ice dams so I don’t pull snow off with a roof rake. However, it is a metal roof and the snow eventually slides off on its own. After the rain and warm temperatures of the past few days, the thick blanket of snow began moving enough that a large amount broke off and covered the cement apron in front of the garage door.
Since we are under a storm warning for a possible 5-9 inches of new snow today, I felt it prudent to shovel the mound in front of the garage before it got buried with even more snow. I need to be able to get the ATV out to plow.
I enjoyed a wonderful surprise yesterday morning after I got in from feeding horses and doing some of that shoveling. Cyndie tried out a recipe for Welsh cakes after seeing them made on one of the episodes of “Welcome to Wrexham.”
They were fabulous! The recipe called for currants, but she made additional batches with dried cranberries and some with golden raisins. It took me extra effort to stop eating them before I overdid it. What a treat!
I’m a lucky guy that Cyndie is so adventurous when it comes to food prep.
Maybe today I will eat leftover Welsh cakes while watching our next episode-binge of the documentary series, between the hours I’m outside shoveling away the new snow accumulation. For a guy who hasn’t been able to catch a break lately, that would be a welcome break from working outside while the winter storm is delivering its punches.
.
.
Relative Something 