Well I had to get it home somehow...

We average 14 inches of the heavy stuff per year. Sometimes it stays for a week or more. The worst is when it starts melting & refreezes overnight into ice.

 

We get plenty of HAIL - can be quite devastating in car-yards



And home windows - this was my Church after the same hailstorm (3 yrs ago). It also killed the metal roof on the Church Hall, and smashed tiled roofs in the area.

 

My brother in law lost his old car that way. He put new glass in it and drove it for a few months. We called it Caesar. That might be the real reason he traded it.

 

Awesome. I need to file that away with "Big Money Waster" and "Break My Wallet."

Even with a two stage blower? Mine moved some pretty wet stuff, just didn't blow it as far.

 

That is a lot of added expense for an average 14 inches per year though. We already have the tractors for other uses. Shovels are cheap too. You do not want to drive with the crazies in the snow anyway.

 

Yeah, I sometimes went a whole winter without needing my machine. But our driveway was long enough that it was well worth it when I did use it. But we had no need for a tractor, so it was kind of the opposite of your situation.

 

We've had a very easy season so far. Only had my thrower out once, and it was only barely worth it. Pumped more water than snow but at least that let the water freeze somewhere else that night. The driveway is big enough that every 4" = an hour on the handlebars.

 

If you already own a tractor and/or your driveway is extremely wide or long, then snow blower may not be very practical. But... average 14 inches per year sound minuscule amount of snow fall. Our area's average seasonal snowfall is ~100 inches, and most of the time, once on ground it does not melt till April or May.

BTW, for us, this season is going very well so far. We had exceptionally cold Nov, but not much snow. Then we had exceptionally warm Dec and no snow. We had average Jan temperature, but normal amount of snow and a few days of January thaw. Looking out of window, I can actually see some bare ground at this time of the season is unusual.

 

So, You believed OAC that food comes from stores and not farms/gardens??

 

OAC is a blithering idiot!! One of the things I miss most about Ohio was growing so much of our own food. My Troybilt tiller was enough, though. We had two plots each about 30X100 feet. Plus cherries, plums, grapes, apples, raspberries, rhubarb. Gosh, I'm gettin' homesick now. This place is pure sand.

 

Our current plot is about 80 feet square. This city guy needed to figure out how to get pond water 500 feet away and 100 feet up to irrigate the clay soil.
We have thornless blackberries and some tomatoes, etc. in enclosed raised beds. The need to be netted to protect against squirrels.

 

My in-laws lived about 75 miles away. They constantly battled deer and also had clay. He once told me that he'd have given anything for soil like what we had at our house. It started good and got better because of all the mulching I did. I also had a ready source of manure. I'm sure I have pictures somewhere, but apparently I never scanned them in. (We moved to FL in the pre-digital era.)

 

Mine's 25'x50', also clay, and the water could be from the creek 80' over and 10' down, but enough falls out of the sky that I've only actually irrigated two days in 4 seasons.

I've been putting in about 1200 earthworms each spring, trying to establish a big colony for soil remediation. My backyard chickens enjoy the ones that don't stay deep. Also added about 600lbs of sawdust and mulch, 200lbs of kitchen compost and 100lbs of fireplace ash and charcoal fragments. Getting there.

I'm starting this year's peppers today, and the tomatoes in 2 weeks.

 

Told the salesperson, "Oh sure, it'll fit." Glad I brought some tie down straps along.

 

For cargo pros: an 8mm diameter carabiner does a great job of clicking into your liftgate latch, and then you can loop a ratchet strap through the far end of it and the latchloop in the doorjamb floor.

 

Something we planted as winter cover a couple of years ago was daikon radish. They grow long to break up the soil, Then you can dog them up and eat them. Very mild but good.


Daikon - Wikipedia

 

Good to know. I was actually taught how to properly prepare daikon for shabu-shabu by a 90+ year old Japanese-American lady; a dear friend who is now missed. Never grew it myself but I'll have to consider it. The property came with a major horseradish growth in place, and we've nurtured it.