The Eagle has landed

3/16/23  After an 8 hour drive we got to within a mile of the house. Our valley was hit very hard… hardest I’ve ever seen. Still no electricity and we got over 3 feet with drifts up to 8. No plows can do that. The orchard guy’s son below brought his bulldozer up also doing the mile of road to our driveway. We popped up the camper on the mud road where the road was closed and turned on the propane heater. After three hours and sun was setting I walked up the road to find the electric crew and his dozer still getting the road open beyond our driveway up to the dead end. So we left our truck down below and and walked up. 

 The 850 foot driveway was packed over 4 feet deep. It took Luann and I a half hour to walk waist level deep snow to get to house. I know how the Donner’s felt. Break trail 3 steps so the dog can leap hole to hole. I swear it was a hard trek.  I got the wood stove going and the snow was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. We lit propane gas light and fed Lucy. It got dark. Then the bulldozer appeared and spent an hour to get to our house…. Multiple passes. He got off dozer and trudged to house.  He was shaking cold. Been doing it 24 hours. He came in by our woodstove and had a whiskey and as many granola bars as we had. He had no gloves. So we gave him some. He stayed a couple hours by the stove and then his partner came in not as frozen but stayed until nearly 10 PM. There are so many people still snowbound they will work all night, town plows were useless and that is saying a lot in a New England hill town. Just as they left the power came on here. Wow. 

I was in the tractor a good part of the day to open up access. The barn might as well be on Pluto. Luckily I have 6 gallons of diesel fuel in 3 Roto-pacs on the camper I can use for the tractor. The truck is now at least closer to the house 400ft down our driveway. I have to keep it there as though I have opened the area in front of the garage I need to keep the tractor in the garage for when the avalanche from the roof/solar panels dumps 4 more feet of snow where I just cleared. Having the tractor in the garage makes it a lot easier to clear going straight out with the front loader. I await the roar of the roof clear!

This is why the adage is truthful about the pessimism of New Englanders. Sure if you say "what a beautiful day it is", the retort will come back, "yes, but it will be awful tomorrow"... We always await the next whopping as we have the nerve to to be happy and go away on a vacation.  

Walking to the house nearly killed me. Waist deep stagger.

Hope by July the deck will have cleared itself.

Couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of 40" snow as the door rose to reveal work ahead.

 

Where the driveway is supposed to start.

Truck/camper halfway up.

One must appreciate the curl of cement heavy snow. Gawd I wish I owned a dozer!

But ...we got out!