The week of February 22 proved to have its own obstacles. The predicted rain came, and it did help wash out some of the ice on my road but it had little effect on the farm road. When I came in on Monday night, the farm road, particularly a half mile stretch that gets little sun, was solid ice. It is not very steep but my truck almost slid off about a half dozen times.
Coming out on Tuesday was even worse, and when I reached the second gate, my track slipped off and tapped the gate post, denting a twelve inch section of the fender and scraping off the paint in several spots. I had spent the whole winter avoiding damage to the truck and now I had messed it up. Fortunately, I usually run my truck into the ground and then trade it in so there wouldn’t be any immediate costs to my carelessness. But the farm road was a genuine concern.
On Wednesday after getting an okay from Mike, I drove my tractor down to the bad stretch and started scraping some of the ice and snow off to the side. I used the bucket to clear about ten loads of snow and ice away from the area around the second gate and that made it much easier to get through safely. I didn’t do much for the rest of the road since my tractor is just too small to scrape away significant snow. On my way out the road was much better and when I returned that night, I had no problems.
Thursday morning was fine getting out, and to my surprise, when I returned home I found that Mike had taken the larger tractor and the big scraping blade through the whole section and now I had a much easier ride in. Winter is by no means over—there is a possibility of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday—but having a few days of safe and easy access is a positive joy.