Friday, January 4, 2013

Snow, Snow, Snow.... what do we do with all the snow?

People are always asking us - what do you guys do with all of the snow you get?
Especially if you live somewhere that doesn't get much or any.

It's not an easy answer and it isn't easy work, but living where we see snow 6 months of the year we have to keep up with it and it's a part of our life.

For the roads we have two trucks with plows attached to them. We have a larger dully HD truck and an older Chevy (red rover we call him) - that work together to get the main roadways plowed and cleared of snow. We have several areas on the ranch that we have to push the snow out of the way. Later in the winter when the snow really piles up sometime the piles are too large for the truck to push over so Marce has to fire up the Caterpillar 966 front end loader and move the piles back or make them higher.

We also have a skid-steerer that we use that has a bucket and also a snow blower attachment that is pretty handy in getting into the little crevices that the trucks can't. Also because we have metal roofs on all of our buildings, after it snows and the sun comes out the snow on the roofs will slide off in front of the cabins - this is where the skid-steerer really shines.

Also we have good ol man power shoveling that has to be done to keep the walkways, decks, and steps clear. For the large decks that aren't covered we have a hand driven Honda snow-blower. Most of the decks, steps etc are shoveled by hand by our maintenance and housekeeping crews.

The key to snow removal is getting the snow up before it's been walked or driven on; so on days that mother nature likes to send us large amounts of snow it's up and at'em early by 5 am to get things cleared before people head to breakfast at 7.But it takes nearly the whole day of work to get everything cleaned up; even with the early start.

So, there's  how we do it... just piece by piece and keeping up with it we are able to deal with the about 300 inches of snow annually that we receive here at the ranch.