Well, it’s hard not to talk about snow this week.

The snow had just started falling around dusk on Saturday night. It was too soon to go out and snowblow but the forecast was for a blizzard. My husband and I debated whether we should wake up in the middle of the night and do a snowblowing pass on the driveway. I argued no; he argued yes. Yes was probably the right answer, but we went with no.

Sunday morning at daybreak, we opened the garage door to over two feet of snow.

Our snow blower is a Cub Cadet garden tractor with a snow blower attachment and snow chains. We bought it from the house’s previous owner because we had nothing else for country-level lawn or snow care. I give the thing credit; it punches above its weight. That said, it was outclassed by this snowfall. The snow was higher than the plow and was sticky. It constantly clogged the mechanisms and stuck to our shovels too.

As our house is partway up a hill, our driveway consists of a large plateau area, a sloping turn to a switchback running across the front of the house, and then a turn to the country lane. Our only goal was a narrow canyon we could get a jeep down in an emergency. On Sunday, we made it about halfway to the road and quit for the day. We wanted to reassess our approach to improve our efficiency. Also, there was no way we would be seeing the township’s plow anytime soon, so one day wouldn’t matter. It’s a mile to the county road and those have to get plowed first before we’d see the township make a pass.

On Monday, we attacked with shovels to help the Cub Cadet out, taking a layer off. Fresh in the morning, this helped immensely and we made it to within 20 feet of the country lane. The snow had compacted and wasn’t nearly as sticky. Still no plow yet (not surprising), so no rush to finish.

On Tuesday we finished the distance to the road by shovel again. Thinking the plow will leave us a large pile AND our forecast is nothing but melting temperatures starting on Wednesday, we considered ourselves done until the plow came. In the meantime, we started enjoying the birds and squirrels we’ve been helping to make it through.

We got about as much snow as Green Bay did and I read they got their second-highest snowfall on record and the highest in 138 years. This gives us hope that we won’t have to deal with something like this for a long time to come, but we’re not counting on it.

On Wednesday morning, the birds had competition:

Wednesday, mid-morning, here was a sight for sore eyes. Not a plow, a front loader!

When we moved to the country in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, we wanted adventure and to experience a new lifestyle. This week, we got both in spades.

{Programming Note: Starting Monday, Driftless Spirits is being featured on a two-week virtual blog tour hosted by Great Escapes. I’ll be focused on highlighting the great bloggers helping to spread the word about my series starter, so “Driftless Thursday” will be on hiatus for two weeks.]