Stabbing in the stakes

 "Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish?  Nothing else." - Epictetus

Update: We had no luck selling the in-law's vehicle over the past month - after all the work I put into it!  We drove it down to the auction, and will attempt to sell it there.  It just happened to be the worst weather in months.  Cold and windy and snowy - and I was out in that removing the license plates :)

Hopefully we can get rid of this thing.  It's in great shape, but nobody wants a 2WD car here, and I completely understand that.  

While I was outside brushing the snow off the car so that it could be driven, I felt the bottom of one foot getting wet.  The sole had split open.  They served me well, but it was time :)

 The tamaracks (a larch) have peaked in vibrance and the needles are beginning to fall off now.

So with the harvest theme, I decided to make pumpkin spice pancakes for the wife and daughter this morning.  Amazingly good, especially with real maple syrup!  I wasn't able to find this in a store, so I had to order it.  A bit pricey, but I think if we only do this once a year, it won't become a budget buster.  I'm sure there is an inexpensive recipe on the web that uses normal pancake batter and pumpkin mix, but I haven't looked.

Today it was time to drive in the snow marker stakes.  This is done to avoid hitting stuff under the snow that you don't want to ram.  Like the head of the water well, curbs, or concrete slabs.

Let's play winter Jeopardy: "I'll take stuff you don't want to hit with a snowplow for $500, Alex." - "What is a concrete slab?"

I also staked the church parking lot, as I have a tendency to go off the asphalt and rip the turf out.  I always feel bad when I do that.  In any event, the soil here is more like gravel, and I always end up with a blister in the palm of my hand, even though I use gloves to jam them into the ground.  It always takes a few tries to find a spot where they will go in far enough that they won't just fall over.

There was a glorious moment where the sky was very dark, and it was snowing, but the sun was lighting the treetops up due to a break in the clouds.  The photos don't do it justice.

And then it was time to install the snowplow on the truck.  This is always a bit of a re-learning process, as I only do it once a year.  It should only take 5 minutes or so, but it always takes fifteen or so, LOL.  This is mostly because I have a difficult time getting the elevation of the plow correct where it engages to the truck mount.

Off-season, I put it up on furniture dollies and roll it out of the way.

There is a bar on the plow that goes into these groove, and then there are pins that go into the holes later on, once you get the bar set into the grooves correctly.  The bar is visible in the image above.

I started using the floor jack to get the moving dollies out from under the plow a couple of years ago.  It really does weigh a lot, and was getting tough to hump each end up in the air.

And it's really difficult to see what's going on with the positioning of the mounts once you get things most of the way in place.  This is always the part that holds up the job.  In the second image the plow needs to come up, obviously.

Eventually the bar slides into the groove on each side, then the pins get locked in to hold the plow in place.

You make an electrical connection and check the hydraulic oil reservoir, then get in the truck and check out lights and operation on the plow.  And lo and behold, it was snowing pretty hard when I finished.

Tomorrow (hehe later today I guess it is) I'll put the Craigslist snow tires and rims on the crusty old Subaru and throw the sandbags in the back of the truck.  At that point, the only remaining winterizing remaining will be to turn on the roof heaters, and start up the garage and shop dehumidifiers once we start dragging snow slop indoors from the wheel wells.