In the early days of winter, when hunting seasons are winding down and it seems like an ice age until opening day for spring trout, outdoors-themed conventions beckon.
I had planned to drive down to Richmond for the Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Festival. Yeah, it sounds stereotypical, but my Facebook buddy and rugged Mossy Creek Fly Fishing guide Tom Sadler promised craft beer vendors would be there too, so it wasn’t all going to be a white wine crowd.
Then my favorite 4:30 a.m. TV meteorologist, WJLA’s Eileen Whelan, broke the news that the first snowstorm of the winter was arriving Saturday.
Suddenly, a lazy fall turned into a week of panic. I don’t mean the panicked buying of bread, milk, and eggs by city slickers and suburbanites who must celebrate snow with French toast.
Our panic is more related to survival. Checking propane levels, chopping firewood, installing the plow on the orange Kubota tractor, testing the power generator, restocking the beer.
Overkill? Hardly. We learned our lesson during 2010’s “Snowmageddon” when nearly three feet of snow surprised everybody and cut us off for more than a week.
At the time, our propane tank was just 15 percent full and the fuel truck couldn’t get through. And drifting snow was too much for my tractor.
Bad news. With our tank nearly empty, we had a problem besides heating the house. We also had lost power and our generator uses propane. That meant we could run it for just a few hours a day to heat the house, charge our gadgets, and make coffee. The snow kept the home brew cold.
We kept a fire going all week, spent the daylight in snowsuits, and, at night, crawled into sleeping bags until a bulldozer finally cleared our gravel road and a path for the Amerigas truck.
So, as the new storm threatened, out to the barn I went. What a mess. I still hadn’t straightened up after summer and fall. The mower, with flat tires, was in the way of the tractor. The snowplow was stuck behind our three-point garden tiller and a rusty, but still-running, 1950 Farmall Cub.
Everything had to come out. Then, I hopped on the Kubota, turned the key for 30 seconds to warm the diesel, and backed it up to the plow. After a lot of swearing and a few crushed fingertips, it was on.
Out went the tractor, and I pushed everything back in and shut the door until spring.
We checked the propane and the arrow pointed to 50 percent. Perfect.
Firewood? Not so good. I had a few sticks in my “Farm Use Only” truck and obviously needed more.
I called my pal John, who also needed wood, and we drove our pickups into another friend’s woods littered with downed oaks and locusts. I had earlier come across piles of cut logs, so we both thought it was going to be an easy job.
But the year’s record rain had turned the forest floor into boot-sucking marshland, and 100 yards down a soggy road, John’s big diesel sank into a ditch. No amount of four-wheel-drive pulling by my Toyota worked.
Stuck with no options, we called the local Road Runner wrecker service, and Lonnie showed up in a Jerr-Dan an hour later. He walked out to John’s truck, shook his head, and gave us the bad news: His wrecker was too heavy to get close to the mud bog.
Maybe his winch and chains could reach. He backed up, pulled the cable out, and hooked up to John’s bumper with three chain links to spare. A $190 bill and $20 tip later, and we were finally loading wood.
Home by sundown, we dumped the wood by the log splitter just as the snow started.
I didn’t get any cut before the storm, predicted at three inches but delivering 10, finished its two-day run. Fortunately the power and heat stayed on, so we didn’t need it.
But another weekend storm is threatening, so I’m gassing up the splitter.
Paul Bedard is a senior columnist and author of Washington Secrets.
