Snow Shoveling Made Easier

It was a dark and stormy night, or so the proverbial first line of a story goes. This particular dark and stormy night must have been punctuated with a tremendous “whump” as one of only two massive oak trees on my property came crashing down. I was quite depressed the next morning to see that beauty laid out in the drainage ditch and up onto the road. Still I wasn’t that shocked as it was half dead by that point after the road crew which dug that ditch a few years earlier took out a major root of the tree in the process.

I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but the loss of that wonderful tree opened up space for a new system on the homestead that wasn’t available before. There had been nights when I’d be driving home late from college or work, back before I was able to go full-time with my art, when the snow was drifted and piled up deep in the driveway. I’d just plow the car in as far as I could, making sure I was off the road, park it where ever it stopped, and call it good. I’d deal with it all in the morning. The goal was always to get the car far enough up the drive that I didn’t find myself fretting all night one of the big, dead limbs of that oak tree would come crashing down on it.

It seems like it was a winter or two after that tree was down before I realized there was no longer a need to park so far up the drive. Force of habit would have me thinking the “correct” spot to park the car was where I park it the rest of the year. I must admit I do tend to be a creature of habits and routines. My routine for years was many winter hours shoveling snow to clear a long, irregular dirt driveway, plus turn around spot, for the car. Occasionally one of my neighbors would plow it for me, which was very cool. (I do have some awesome neighbors.) Generally though I’d do it all by hand with my snow shovel. In the early years I just couldn’t afford to hire anyone to plow the drive, and later I didn’t feel I could justify the cost since it had already been made clear I could shovel it. I could get a snow blower, but I really find those, as well as lawnmowers, loud, obnoxious to use, and annoying to maintain. If you don’t know me well enough yet, you’ll find I tend to go for simple tools like a shovel over more complex ones like snow blowers or plow trucks. They cost less, are easier to maintain, I can generally repair them myself, and they tend to be better for the environment.

Still, I really don’t much care for shoveling snow. While I admit I generally need the exercise, esp. in winter, it seems like the snow storms happen when I have much more pressing issues to deal with than clearing the drive. I forget just when it happened, but one day, probably while I was shoveling the driveway, it dawned on me that the only reason I parked my car way up by the studio in the winter was force of habit. The logical place to park was near the road which I could now safely do without a huge half dead oak looming over the space!

I was feeling slightly sheepish about it at first, like I was breaking some sort of rule, or the neighbors would all think I was a real slacker, but I started parking about a car length back from the road whenever the winter snows began. By staying a car length back my vehicle is safe from getting pummeled by frag when the county snow plows come roaring by.

Now rather than shoveling a huge long length of driveway wide enough for my car I just shovel a short section this wide and the rest is a simple single shovel width foot path. I suppose you could still call me a slacker, but I prefer to see it as energy efficiency. In this case I’m being efficient with my own personal energy, saving it for other tasks I’d rather do. As an entrepreneur this is the sort of thing I try to do when developing new work. I want to find more efficient ways to reach a goal without compromising the final result. If I had a garage to park in then leaving the car out by the road would compromise the result. I don’t though, so the only difference is how much energy I spend shoveling snow.

It’s a simple little thing, but this new system has been working great for me. I thought I’d share it in case any of you are in a similar situation. Of course, the larger lesson here is that any sort of change can open up new opportunities in a system. The loss of the tree meant I could not only use it’s energy stored in the wood to heat my home, I could also make a shift that saves me energy shoveling snow on an ongoing basis year after year. The trick it to be aware and remember to look for these changes and opportunities, rather than just running on routine habits. It’s certainly something I need to be more mindful of in my life.

Studio Snippet

I had finished up the first course of chasing work on this piece at which point the copper has gotten work hardened. In order to push the depth of the design work deeper I need to anneal the piece, which is a fancy way to say soften the metal by heating it up and quenching it. To do this though I first need to melt out the wax I fill the vessel with needed for the chasing process. To do this safely I prop it up so I can heat slowly from underneath letting the molten wax always have an easy escape route. It drips down into my collection tray for me to reuse later.

There is generally still a wax residue left in the vessel which I simply burn out. Conveniently I can be annealing my piece at the same time. I quenched this in water and cleaned it up in my pickle bath. Finally I propped the now soft piece right side up, and melted new wax chunks into it until it was filled to the rim. Once it cools enough I can begin my next round of chasing. What the wax is doing is providing some internal support so the piece doesn’t collapse as I hammer on the outside. Yet, the wax still allows some give so I can push the vessel wall inward more.

I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.