Re: Snow: The rest of the story
Thanks all for the excellent advice! I was all set to drive out of here this afternoon (so I can shovel the walk back in the city) and got hung up about 80 yds down the drive, it had snowed too much since my first pass cleaning up the road and it was packed right up under the axels. So my wife got to steer the car in reverse while I pulled with the tractor (trailier hitch to draw bar).
Then back to scraping down to the dirt and lifting with the FEL...slow going. The neighbor with the plow was stuck himself (we had sleet on top of the snow last night), but he showed up with his own tractor, FEL and rear blade (no TnT!). Working both ends we met in the middle and he used his blade to scrape the whole thing down to the dirt. Trouble is, his six foot rear blade can only move so much snow to the side before it falls back in on itself...so we have a very clean, very narrow track.
The lesson I see has two parts: 1) a blade works a ton better than the FEL at scraping down to the dirt so I oughta get one, and 2) the blade only works in shallow snow, so you have to use it early and often. If you miss this, then there's not much to be done except shovel it out with the FEL, which is what got me going on this post in the first place.
Ten people at the office are asking me to bring the tractor home and dig them out. Mmm....I'd have it along to dig myself out again if need be. But I haven't got a residential parking sticker for it, so I guess it stays here.
Chas