Snowzilla

No Pics. Too Tired

In case you missed it, New Jersey was hit with a blizzard on Saturday.

Here is my area we got somewhere around 26" of snow. All I know is that I shoveled the path to the barn--around 100'--three times during the storm. It was not drifting full. It was snow that fell. I suspect that was 8"-9" of snow each time.

This morning, Sunday, I got up at 8 AM, fed the horses quickly and the climbed up on the Kubota tractor with the front end loader to start clearing my driveways.

4 1/2 hours later, I dragged myself back into the house for a respite. I'd gotten some 200' of driveway cleared mostly by digging and shifting snow one load at a time.  It was nearly impossible to actually plow snow that deep. The snow was light on top, but the depth had packed the lower layers down and they were actually heavy. Kubota was brave, bold, and mighty, but not mighty enough to push more than about three feet forward at each swipe.  (A friend on Facebook posted that two snow plows had gotten stuck in her cul-de-sac trying to plow.) Suffice it to say, unless the snow removal equipment was really big, plowing was not an easy task.

I did want to try my snowblower--recently repaired and tuned up--but I could not get it started. Not sure I was doing everything right to get it going, I gave up to try again tomorrow. I re-read the directions on the Internet and will try again when I am not frustrated by just breaking through the piles of snow to get my driveway open.

A bit later in the afternoon, my new young next door neighbor's father was in my driveway. He had come to clear out the next door driveway so his son could get home with his partner and brand new baby. Apparently, he had to take his partner to the hospital during the storm to deliver a beautiful baby girl.

They have a snowblower next door, but the drifts were pretty big, so I stumbled back out to the barn, hoisted myself back onto the tractor and went over to help them out. I cut a swathe though the barricade by the road and then battered my way up to the house, getting the basic drive area open. They finally managed to get the snowblower running and spent at least another hour or so finishing up. Hopefully, father, mother and daughter will be able to make their way safely into the yard and house.

I am really tired. I did shovel a path to the manure pile for the wheelbarrow so I can clean stalls and another path to the squirrel feeder so I can keep my furry buddies fed.

Now, all I really want to do is just take a nice long winter's nap.

Enough snow for the season.  I will ignore dire forecasts in the future. Spring will come early instead.