Costs of a Severe Winter

Posts have been sparse the past few weeks due to a hectic schedule including preparations to attend a writing conference next week in California and my Grandmother who almost lost her life from serious infection and congestive heart failure. She has recovered miraculously and I feel better now about leaving for the conference.

During my absence here we've had snow and ice upon snow and ice and a nearby tree fall on our trailer roof over the living room. Fortunately, it was a small tree and rested more on its branches than on our roof so there was no damage. Jim was able to cut it down fairly quickly, but the kids and I packed up and slept at Grampa's for the night since just after the tree fell, we lost power. It turned out to be completely unrelated to the tree and was back on a short time later, but with high winds on the heavy-snow-laden trees threatening to take down others, we felt safer at Grampa's house for the night.

We haven't seen this kind of accumulation for twenty years in this area. For the first time since I can remember, the ground has been covered with snow all winter. I actually am not sick of snow, but I'm ready for spring. (NOT mud season, though--ack.) So is Jim's tractor. Plowing in the last snow storm broke both the plow mount and cracked a plastic fuel filter on the tractor so the tractor won't stay running. Jim spent yesterday fabricating a new plow mount out of steel.

Next year one thing is certain: we have to budget more for fuel. We just got our gas/diesel bill. We had no idea plowing so much snow would quadruple our bill!

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Tags: winter ^ snow ^ plowing ^ storm damage ^ tractor ^ cost

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