State of the Farm: Winter

One of my two readers recently complained about the cold where she lived and wondered why the hell we live in the Bitter Hellhole that is the northeast. She's not alone. My sister asks the same thing. She wants to retire to Panama.

 

Well, I was born in Southern California near Los Angeles. This makes me lucky since I have no federal or state requirement to want to live there.

 

I'm not a fan of the cold. My residence pattern starts near Los Angeles, jumps to north Alabama, skips up to the Pacific Northwest, drops to Missouri, and ends up here in said Bitter Hellhole. 

 

Winters in Missouri are not to be sneezed at. (Unless, you are experiencing it there. At which point, one's nose drips continuously and the winter is, in fact, sneezed at.) The wind rolls down from Manitoba and the Dakotas along with Iowa and Minnesota and will peel your skin like an orange. I found this out the first winter I spent at college. I had only a cloth coat and could tell which way the wind blew by the way my nipples crinkled up. 

 

I spent a portion of my tuition money at the Army/Navy Surplus and wore a snorkel parka suitable for McMurdo Station. After that, I wasn't cold any more.

 

Which is, in part, my point. Cold is something that can be managed. Snow is something that can be managed. Once I got the hang of it, I found I like the winter here. It's a matter of technology and engineering. 

 

Today, for example, we are in a temperature downswing. We got up to 27F and it's going below 20F by sunset. The wind has been averaging about 5mph with a peak so far of 23 mph. We started the day with falling snow that stopped around 10:30 AM and I went out to snow blow.

 

Snow blowing takes about two hours. A little more if we were stupid enough to leave the cars out. I've been here for coming up to fifty years and my wife is a native and we still sometimes forget. 

 

Upper twenties but strong wind. That meant I wasn't going to use jeans and a jacket to snow blow. Instead, I'd use the insulated coverall—what I call the "spacesuit." But it was too warm for insulation inside. Just a hat and a hoodie. 

 

I find the problem is usually getting too hot rather than too cold. In this case, I used a regular baseball cap and good gloves—good gloves are probably the most important component. And boots.

 

Here's the picture: we have a good 150 foot driveway, two turn arounds, a path to the wood pile, a path to the greenhouse, a path to the vents for the furnace and the heatpump. Plus, a couple of paths here and there that I don't immediately need—to the brush pile, the garden, the different trees I have to prune, etc. The idea of the latter is that you cut the trails you'll need eventually on the chance there isn't a thaw between now and when you need them. I've been hard schooled on neglecting winterly duties.

 

We have the Rule of Two in our household: any essential appliance, service, or capability needs backup. We need power—when we first moved into  our house we lost power about every other month. So, we have a backup generator that we can plug into the house circuit. We also have a wood stove to cut down on burning gas as much as we can. We have two cars. We have two snow blowers. Each snow blower has both electric and crank start. I check them every year.

 

We have a checkered history with snow blowers. Our first one was gifted to us by my father-in-law when we moved into our house. It was small. The impeller was engaged with a foot lever and ran until it was physically disengaged. It was only about 10 inches tall and 18 inches wide. That winter we had snow storm after snow storm. They were still skiing up in New Hampshire in June. The following year we bought the Dynamark, a big 8 horsepower machine that we've kept in good repair for better than thirty years. But one winter, it had problems and we were back to using a snow shovel and our FIL gift. I figured we would need another one.

 

This time, I thought, we'd buy the best one we could. We bought an Ariens and for nine years it was essentially a back up for the Dynamark. It either quit working, needed repair, or just wilted in the face of real snow. We sold that one and tried a Toro. That one just whimpered.

 

I finally found review articles that talked about the way the different snow blowers were built and their intended weather. That pointed us to a Troy-Bilt about five years ago. Troy, New York, is just north of Albany and a little higher latitude than we are. It is just within the lake effect band from the Great Lakes so we figured it would be close to the same weather we have. Sure enough, we got it and haven't looked back.

 

This is not anything approaching an endorsement. My point is that to get the right snowblower for us required research and effort. Like finding the insulated coverall. Like finding the right gloves. Like deciding on the Rule of Two.

 

After snowblowing, I came in to lunch and a fire in the wood stove. Messed around and then came up here to write this down.

 

Living in our corner of the Bitter Hellhole takes thought and effort but it's a task I enjoy, so it's not much effort at all. 

 

But this is how such things are done. You have a problem. You try a solution. The solution fails or is inadequate. You refine the solution. If that doesn't work, you find a new solution. I didn't have much money and so I found a coat at the Army/Navy store. The coats I had weren't adequate for snow blowing so I found a coverall. You fix the problem. You don't discard the entire effort and say "winter is a Chinese hoax." 

 

That said, we're financially secure, own our own home, and can plan for these sorts of things. Many people in Massachusetts and other areas of the North East are not so well off. The weather is one of many things that requires resources people may not have. However, Massachusetts does have a welfare system and heating supplement plans. The government puts its money where its policies are. Obamacare was originally Romneycare which derived from Nixoncare. Massachusetts is not anywhere close to a perfect state—it's too damned expensive, for one thing—but it is also as good a state as I've lived in anywhere and better than most. 

 

I fret about other states where their representatives don't seem to care about who they represent. Mike Johnson in Louisiana, for example. Or Tommy Tuberville for Alabama.

 

But good things happen, too. Like the red tail that I accidentally scared out from the chestnut until he landed in the persimmon tree, shaking his tail and glaring at me. Eventually, he figured I was beneath his notice.