Clearing the Driveway

This post

To: All our winter loving friends

From: The Hipps

On The Occasion: The first substantial snow fall

With: Love (to you all, not the weather)

On Saturday we had a real live blizzard, whiteout almost all day. Dad had to drive through the stuff home from Omaha, but that is another story. Sunday the driveway was drifted up, not badly but enough to keep us confined. After Bible study we suited up to clear it out.

For the first time in years I suited up to go help. They told me I looked really funny in my eclectic winter wear. I mostly went along to take pictures because I thought this would be an adventure worth blogging about. Little did I know...

This is Max. If you want to know more about him, ask Trina. No, he is not Trina's, but she wishes he was!

This was supposed to be the only picture of the tractor before it was running. Dad and Benjamin got the snow cleaned off of it and tried to start it. Nothing.

Maybe it is cold. After all, it was only about 1 degree outside. So, the faithful Nipco to the rescue.

In the meantime, we started on the driveway with shovels. After last winter's 8 foot drifts, these little 2 footers seemed hardly a challenge.

Bad news. The tractor was not just cold. After a summer of use it decided to chose Sunday to collapse from flywheel complications. It would need to be pull started if it was going to be pushing any snow.

Meanwhile, John and Rosie bundled up and came out to play. They have been waiting for snow since September. The sledding was not ideal because the drifts left some spots rather bare and others rather lumpy, with not enough room to get going in between. I came around the corner just in time to watch John drag his sled to this position, flop his overstuffed with outside clothes self on top of it and slide all of, I kid you not, 2 feet. I felt sorry for him until he jumped up as excited as if he had just skied down Everest.

Back to the driveway. There was not much room to pull start the tractor with, so Trina and I cleared out a path.

Early pull starting attempts. We tried using the Blazer first because the 656 does not like to start in the cold. There was just not enough room to get it going.

By now it was lunch time, so after getting the Nipco set where it could warm up the 70, we went in to eat and warm ourselves up.

After lunch the guys went back out and tried to get the 656 to start so it could pull start the 70. This took several hours because it decided Sunday was the perfect day to insist on being worked on too. Next time, both tractors decide they need to be worked on at once, I hope they pick a day where it gets warmer than 5 degrees.

Finally, they got it running, and after a few attempts got the 70 pull started. We all literally jumped up and down hugging each other. It had been about 6 hours coming at this point. I got this picture just seconds before what happened in the next picture.

The cable going to the blade broke and the tractor died at the same instant. It was low on gas, but I am not sure why it ran so poorly. Another setback that cost 30 minutes or so.

Timothy expressing how we all felt at this point. Next-to-frozen fingers and toes kind of aggravate one's view of the situation anyway...

But finally, after 7 hours of work, the lane was cleared. The tractor died one more time, but this time it did not take that long to pull start it and right about dusk Dad piled up the last bit of snow out of the way. Morals of the story: 1. If at first, or twentieth, you don't succeed, keep trying. 2. God does answer prayers, but not always as fast as we would like him to. 3.Never take an open driveway for granted, ever.