Battle of the Snowbelt

Well, I just finished shoveling out from a wet, ice crusted 30" snowstorm. It’s funny the things we take for granted. Growing up just east of Cape Cod I was used to shoveling wet snow. It was a common occurrence that a severe snowstorm would ultimately go too close to the coast and change to rain. Initially both parents would get out the shovels and start digging, then came what was termed the "popcorn machine" or a snowblower that resembled one as it shot rocks at my neighbors house, more than once breaking a window. Eventually, my uncle invested in a plow and digging out was just a call away. Moving away and especially to the northern climes of Maine, my wife and I have had a similar curve of snow removal.

In Maine, it is very common to get well over a foot of snow in every storm. Many people have plows, and just as many rent their services for plowing. However, being up to our eyeballs in debt and still in college we learned to do everything that needed to be done ourselves. This included snow removal. We started off shoveling out after every storm, then we learned that if we shoveled every few inches it would be easier. We eventually got a small snowblower that would only start in the fall equipment check, but not during any snowstorm. Eventually we got a tractor with a plow, but it was so heavy it actually would get stuck on any slippery surface...not good for plowing snow. The next attempt was equipping our lawnmower with a snowblower. This had worked the best so far, but between all the tires going flat, the choke and throttle cables freezing solid, the battery dying amongst other things it too was close to an utter failure. As a last attempt before just returning to the standard shovel method, we decided to buy an ATV.

An ATV or ORV is a piece of equipment that is the size of and operates similar to a motorbike, but has 4 fat tires and is used for recreation and for yard work. They range from very small 2 wheel drive speed machines, to 4wd 700lb truck like beasts. My machine is about in the middle, it's only about 250cc and 2wd. It's not very fast, not very powerful, it's over 25 years old, but it does do what I want it to do and that was to plow.
I bought it on Ebay for $800, jury rigged a small 36" plow to the front, tossed some weights on the back, put some chains on the tires and then went to plowing. The difference was night and day. It had traction we never before experienced, the pushing ability of my slippy tired tractor, and could plow my entire 150' driveway in the same amount of time it used to take me to just shovel a path to my garage.

Up until just recently I had not found a storm that this machine would not plow. With a combination of a half inch of ice, slush base, and several inches, the plow could not clear it as easily as usual. We resorted to just using it to push snow into piles, then hand shoveling it off the drive. Overall though, because it was able to still make the job a bit easier by making piles, it was not entirely defeated.


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