Weird drive home.

One of the projects I did while I was down there was building a retainer for my sisters horse water tub.  It is a C shape since one end goes up against the fence and the horse pasture is lower than the yard.  The recalculations are because I figured the size of a landscape timber wrong.  I thought they were 3"x5" nominal, but they measured differently.

It came out rather nicely though.

The corners are interleaved, there is a brace on the bottom, and every board has a metal bracket on it.  I hope that will be strong enough.  It will hold the dirt, but horses can be rather rough on it.  

I drove home a couple of days ago, and everything was backwards from normal.  Traffic was that of a non-holiday weekend, the most snow was in KY (Ashland area).  The further north I went the less snow there was. The cheapest gas on the drive home was in NY.  I had to fill up an extra time because I was driving fast causing my gas mileage for the trip home to be poor (14.5mpg-ish) and a couple of the tanks I didn't run as far down as normal since I was stopping for something else anyways.  Very strange trip.  

Despite just getting a couple of feet of snow before Christmas, NH is practically barren.  I also noticed that the power company finally took down that tree that they said they were going to a couple of months ago.

There were some vicious wind storms while I was gone.  My lot didn't make it through unscathed.  Unfortunately the carport had a couple of blowouts.  Ugh.  I will fix that in the spring, it is too cold to cut plexiglass now, it would shatter.

The roof on the carport looks like it shed snow pretty well, despite being only a 3:12 pitch.  Apparently when the snow came down, it unplugged the extension cord going up to the shed.

There were a couple of branches down around the lot.  

Something in the shed leaked.  I doesn't extend under the saw, which would have been my first guess.  The green can on the left is the Tru Fuel stuff that the saw guy was talking about.

Some of the other stuff blew around the yard, so I will have to go pick stuff out of the yard in the spring, most of it will be frozen into the ground by now.  That is the polycarb I was intending to bring down for my dad's carport.  Not quite clear (which is why I didn't use it for mine) but it UV protects the inside (a bigger issue for him than me since his covering is on the south wall).

The cover for the AC managed to stay put thankfully.

My emergency supply of cheese was still good when I got home thankfully, so I didn't have to go out shopping immediately.

Instead I pulled out the tractor and decided to eliminate the bank at the road.  It was only about 4-5 inches deep, but I figured it would be good to get some minimal experience with the tractor in the snow.  The rear blade does a very nice job on the paved apron.

All in all, clearing the end was faster than driving the tractor up and down the hill.

In case you didn't see in the last picture, the bottom of the driveway is a solid sheet of ice.  It happens every year, so I am not too worried.  The tractor didn't slip or slide, the chains worked good.  Some of my driveway markers didn't have a good time with the ice though.  Oh well, I don't really need them; I know where the edges of my driveway are, they follow the various features on the hillside.

After that I unloaded the truck.  The tractor was more unnerving to unload than I expected.  The metals ramps hold the weight just fine (this was their first use), but the top is just a bent piece of sheet metal.  Since the tractor is out of alignment, there is nothing to prevent the front wheels from effectively throwing the ramps off the tailgate as it drives down.  Thankfully the tractor only fell a couple inches, but it is definitely something to keep in mind, and perhaps I will put a rubber backing or something on the metal plate portion.  The end on the ground has teeth so that end doesn't slide.  

I moved the deck for the Craftsman onto the sawhorses and parked the Cub Cadet right next to it.  In the future, I will swap them, and perhaps put the Craftsman in sideways, but this appears to work (I am of course assuming both live another year).  I heaved the deck for the Cub Cadet up onto the sawhorses manually this year (it was already chest high being in the back of the truck), but next year I will just lift it with the tractor.

The tractor does fit in behind it in the current orientation, but it means that the rear blade isn't far enough underneath to get the protection afforded by the carport (not a biggie) and I have to pull the tractor in now.  The front bucket isn't as wide as the grading blade, and it just barely fits next to the tractor.

One other thing I have noticed is that the mice have once again attempted to infiltrate my home.  I left the traps set up (which hadn't gotten anything in weeks when I left) and got 4 mice despite only having three traps set up; one was fittingly dead in the bottom of my garbage can.  So I will have to keep an eye on them.  I know where they are entering, they are coming in where the plumbing in the laundry room goes through the floor, but it also means that they are in the underbelly of the house.  I will have to take a look at it in the spring.