Growing up as a kid, there were some really severe winters in my area, so my dad bought a snow blower, when I started farming i had to have one as well in order to feed cattle and do chores. As luck would have it, the places I've lived collected a lot of snow, with wind currents and location of buildings, snow removal was a constant battle, the more the wind blew, the more snow there was to move, call it luck of the draw, couple that with the roads we lived on which were also impassible in severe weather and you've got lifetime job security moving snow. Then toss in the fact, when the weather gets really bad, the counties pull the snow plows and maintainers off the roads...............but life still goes on, people need to get home, people still get sick and inured, people need electricity to keep houses warm and the lights on, so portable generators need to be moved constantly from place to place, livestock still to be fed daily, milk haulers still need to pick up milk on dairy farms, vets still need to get to sick and inured animals and lastly people still do some really stupid things, like not stock up on food and needed things before the storm hits....................so they venture out anyhow and yes those suffering dementia and alzheimers didn't miraculously get cured, so when an 80 plus year old neighbor lady thinks she's late for school will wander out in a blinding snow storm at 4pm in order to get to school on time...........and someone needs to go looking for her because she's dressed in her night gown yet... yes those things still happen in white out conditions and weather so bad only an idiot would leave the house............... so you do whatever it takes to keep life moving forward and everyone safe and peoples livelihoods going including my own.
There is good and bad in everything, but I can tell you this much, living in a remote area, you appreciate every day you can jump into a vehicle and just drive to wherever it is you need to go, you also appreciate it when everyone stocks up ahead of time and when the weather really turns bad, your phone never rings unless its someone who just wants to chat about nothing important.
Its been over a decade since I've even had the snowblower on any tractor, we've just not had any severe winters lately I guess, but I still own two tractor mounted snow blowers and neither are going anywhere as long as I'm alive, their the best thing money ever bought, even better when they sit in shed not used, same goes for a generator, I still remember the winter my tractor and generator never shut off for 11 days straight in order to keep the farm and everything on it alive, fed, watered and thawed out. The whole off the gird living is a nice theory, but reality sucks when its 80 below has been for over a week and you've got 300 head of cattle, five kids and a wife and the tractor and generator is running 24/7 and if anything goes wrong, there is nobody that CAN come to save any of you, then it really sinks in just how alone you really are, as they say, your funeral will be in good weather once the storms all over with, and that's about as real as it gets. Yes back in the day, we also had two generators just in case, and plenty of number one fuel on hand at all times, we bought fuel and transmission filters, power service and automatic transmission fluid in volume to have on hand at all times, along with enough fuses and extra wiring, circuit breakers to stock a small city for decades just in case things went really bad.
It sank in one day decades ago, a friend of mine called, he was in Hawaii on vacation and after chatting for a while I told him it was 160 degrees colder where I was compared to him, he was sitting on beach and it was 80 degree's, the temp with wind chill was over 80 below where I was at. That winter we had over 80 below wind chills for two straight weeks, for two months the temp never reached zero out, as they say the little things in life mean the most and green grass in the spring was the most beautiful sight, the next most beautiful sight was taking the snow blower off the tractor, and putting the generator away meant winter was finally over with.
Some place I still have the picture, back in the late 60's my father in law bought a brand new JD 4020 diesel tractor with cab, and the photo is of his new tractor sitting on a wind blown hard snow drift, the next photo is from the other side of the house, and the house roof was below him, that was an old late 1800's two story house and yes the snow drift went up and over the house. He gave up trying to keep the front door open, and it had a door on the second floor that went out onto the flat roof of the kitchen, its still there today, many houses had them and for that reason, he used that door as the front door all winter long, none of the first story house windows were visible at all and only those windows on the back side of the house were visible on the second story, the rest of the house was one huge snow drift, hard enough to drive a 4020 tractor up on and take the picture..............just outside of Waverly Iowa also in a very rural area. Without the photo, nobody would ever believe it possible to sit a tractor up on a two story house roof in the middle of winter...............he was also a huge believer in number one diesel fuel all his life.
, but rarely.
