I’m still fried. All the miles wore me out. I thought I’d kick back and dedicate myself to recovery (notwithstanding my “bad dairy” stupidity). Unfortunately, new and exciting shit happened to liven my existence.
Spring breakup / mud season had mostly wrapped up in my absence. After a few day’s rest I thought I might get my motorcycle out again. Everything was puppies and rainbows. Then it snowed. And it wasn’t a happy light fluffy dusting either!
Given that the driveway is softer than a politician’s resolve, I wasn’t sure I wanted to drag a snow bucket across it. But I had the tractor out to haul firewood anyway. I plowed a little bit. I took great care not to gouge the shit out of my already quite trashed driveway.*
It’s a good thing I did! I thought the storm was over but woke up the next day to a lot more; an absolute shitload of snow. Wet sloppy nasty dense shit. Deeper than my best boots! The areas I’d cleared were deeply covered. The areas I hadn’t were just plain buried.
My tractor is solid but sometimes the math just isn’t in your favor. It was like plowing wet cement with your tires on a base of peanut butter. (I worked hard trying to think of an analogy and still can’t quite describe it. I guess you had to be there.)
With a six foot bucket, pushing two feet of snow, I could go about ten or fifteen feet before the wheels broke loose. (Often even less.) That’s something like 120 – 180 cubic feet of material… max. In normal conditions that’s nothing. I can usually push a lot more snow and shove it much further. In this temperature and with this water content every bite at the apple became a bucket full of nope.
Slow and steady wins the race. The tractor and I were at it for hours. Incrementally, shaving off a foot or two of navigable space at a time. I was extra careful because these conditions are a stress on any equipment.
I’d planned for this. I chose a tractor & snow bucket instead of a truck & plow specifically for the worst conditions. Tractors are built to handle loads, especially dynamic loads. (Like the stress of a plow digging into earth as the tractor moves forward.) Modern trucks are awesome but I think anything that can do highway speeds is sub-optimal for shoving great masses just in front of the steering geometry. I wonder how any truck can survive plowing on a day like this? (Obviously it works; most local “hired” plowing is done with pickups. The drivers make bank but also kill expensive trucks. I’m not sure about their “profit to nuked tie rod ends” ratio. Anyone fortunate enough to own a skid steer uses that instead of their truck. Farmers have it made. They have big tractors which can move big tonnage. My mid-weight tractor & bucket isn’t a common solution, but it seems to work well.) I’ll bet a few pickups with freshly blown transmissions wound up scattered around the area today.
It’s an unusual situation. Normally, it’s not freaking April! Even when it does snow in April it’s usually not two feet. It’s just a bad hand. We’re prepared for January snow, not April. In January the snow isn’t so dense and the base is rock solid and frozen. You may freeze your ass off but there’s traction and reasonable density. This was… special.
Oh well, I’m alive and so is my tractor. I cleared enough snow that I won’t completely lose the race should it snow more. Plus the cleared areas should be a little less “floody” when this shit melts (it is April after all).
I think of all those news shows that blast scenes of everyone panic buying bread and milk and eggs when it snows in Virginia. It seems so silly from my situation. I’m relieved to have “access” but flouncing off to the store to buy fixings for French toast is at best unwise and at worst completely impossible. I plowed access to the county road (and my mailbox, which understandably hasn’t received mail in several days). When the driveway is mush I’ll often just walk that distance on foot. But the truck could manage it. This means, if I really needed to, I could drive for town. But the county road is more theoretically passible than demonstrably so. I’m a good driver with a beastly machine. In 4×4 low range my truck can handle it. A normal SUV (which lacks low range) is probably OK if one were a careful driver. Anything smaller would risk winding up either high centered or ditched.
Did I mention it’s April? In a week, all this will probably be gone. Another reason to just hang tight and let events play out. But… no motorcycle for a while.
A.C.
*I have an untamed dirt driveway that’s getting worse. Normally people buy truckloads of dirt periodically for such a driveway. They’ll often hire someone to grade it too. I’m cheap so I don’t do either. I’ve been trying to maintain it with a rear blade on my tractor. That works until it doesn’t. In 2025 things went too far and I just couldn’t smooth it out. I messed with the blade and made it worse! It’s rutted and patchy… really sucks. I think the solution is a thing called a “land plane”. It’s a leveling implement that costs a little over $1000. That’s a lot but probably less than a couple cycles of dirt delivery and professional grade jobs? Theoretically my tractor could pull it. I sure would like to have a more civilized driveway. I’ve been putting off the expense for decades but it is what it is. I might have to buy one this summer. Or, I can just continue with my current approach; denial.
There is no substitute for a good path… Swallow hard and sign the check for some material. But call around for pricing and options. Around here some people use the washout from concrete trucks. It’s cheap compared to actual road base material and works very well if it’s fresh. Or cut some trees and make a corduroy driveway.
“flouncing off to the store” I will pay good money for video of you doing that.
Good luck!
A previous driveway of my acquaintance was 0.3 mi long with a 90 degree turn and much of it paralleled what was effectively a snow fence on the downwind side. We were definitely snowed in. A friend of the family called in a favor on the QT from the county. They snuck over with a road grader. Later, they snuck over with a big-ass end loader to unstick the grader. This was before cell phones and they couldn’t use the county radios cuz the supervisor wouldn’t approve. Later, the end loader guy was taking a leak so he was facing the right way to be able to see and flag down the county snowplow which was supposed to unstick him… AC, believe me when I say “I feel your pain”.
That’s a great story!
I use a box scraper on my road, pull it behind a 26 horse Kubota with no issues. Much tidier than the 6’ scraper blade, fills in potholes and moves dirt wherever I want it.
I was initially thinking of a box scraper. I think they’re a little cheaper. I got scared off wondering if it’ll work on the “swoops” that have formed on my driveway?
I have “low spots” in the driveway. As the tractor drives along the driveway dragging the rear blade the front tires go down into the dip. That means the rear implement raises; thus dropping whatever dirt I was pulling. Then when the front tires go up out of the dip, the rear implement digs extra deeply; right at the bottom of the swoop where I don’t want to excavate. I’ve tried feathering the rear blade (or floating) but I can’t get enough control. Would a box scraper not do that? I’m asking as a guy who’s never used a box blade.
Once upon a time, in a land far away, I worked for National Parks. We were verboten to use materials alien to the local environment, with narrow exceptions. For stabilising walking paths, we were permitted to use a product called “Westlig”, which was waste lignin from timber. It closely resembled instant coffee powder in colour, aroma, and affinity to water.
Mixed 1:9 with the local soil and some road metal for texture, and thoroughly pounded flat with a Wacker packer, it made a smooth hard surface. Even with substantial rain and concentrated heavy loads leaving ruts, a few passes of the packer would restore the smoothness. This stuff was also used in open cut mines to stabilise roadways. With some attention to drainage, and a decent roller dragged by your terraforming vehicle, you may have some hope of a driveway less like 3rd Passchendaele.
Perhaps a local boyscout troop could be recruited to do the grunt work of digging out a foot thick layer, doing the mixing, and re-laying. For added amusement at little cost, you could channel your inner Colonel Saito and strut about in riding breeches and pith helmet motivating the coolies with a nice bit of cane. Speedo!
Stefan v.
I think I may do the simple basic approach of buying a box scraper and finding out if it works. (That seems to be the default solution.)
I suspect I’m overthinking things and it’s more about me than the driveway. I have this weird mental trait that any purchase over a few hundred bucks I freak out and think “I’ve got one shot at this”. I think that if I get the wrong implement it’s the end of the world. That’s not the case at all.
The same overthinking happened when I bought my first motorcycle. I had this idea that I got one motorcycle for life and it had better last forever and do everything and cost nothing. Ironically I got a Honda Shadow 1100 that did everything I asked of it very well. A miracle! I still have it and it still runs perfectly. I now put classic/collector’s plates on a thing I purchased new! It took until 2020 to finally got my head out of my ass enough to buy a second (!) motorcycle. I’m glad I did.
Now I think a reasonable man would buy an implement even though he lacks a 100% guarantee it’ll “do everything”. Also, there’s no rush, I can’t “fix” the driveway until “mud season” cycles through again and things are dry.
Another thought. An implement, any implement, would be me using my tractor to do work for me. That’s far more attractive than the bullshit of trying to hire someone to deliver gravel and/or grade. You’d think paying money to get shit done would be merely expensive but it’s also inefficient and painfully annoying. I used to hire people to snowplow my driveway and every damn winter it was a clusterfuck. I went through two or three dudes per seasons. That said the stories why they didn’t show up were awesome; sometimes the truck was broke, once I think the dude was in jail but his brother in was more than happy to drive the truck and collect the cash, one guy had an epic ATV that worked OK but he froze too much and quit, once an angry ex-wife picked up the phone when I called (she had the house and had kicked his ass out). She was delighted to spend forever telling me all about how much her ex sucked but wouldn’t give me his number to get my driveway done.
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I like that we both are from a time when there was such a thing as a Boy Scout troop and they could (and would!) do grunt work. (I was a Boy Scout for real but it was already fading by the time my kid was briefly a Boy Scout.) We remember a universe that’s long gone.