The snow just keeps getting higher

We haven’t had many big dumps of snow, but it just keeps piling up!

The good news is I kinda like shovelling. It is great exercise! Except now I have to shovel it over my head is places now! The worst is when you throw up a load of snow in your shovel, and then half of it slumps back down the bank and you get to shovel it again.

Here are some pictures!

^ Had to push our way out the door in the morning!

The snow on our last wood pile is way over my head:

Jeff thought it would easy enough to knock the overhang off the roof, but some of it fell on our oil tank and bent the pipes! Luckily our friend Taylor, who installed it, came by and deemed it okay! Whew. Could you imagine an oil leak in all this snow? Ewww!

Jimmy giving the street a quick plow:

Jeff was away last week on a bison trip. Unfortunately the day before, once he got the trailer loaded up and all packed to go, he got sucked into the deep snow on the side of our street and got super duper stuck. Yes, even a F350 can get stuck if the snow is deep enough! Our friend Tim came to the rescue, and then came by with the grader again the next day to push the banks back again.

Hank loves the snow. Especially taking fast sporadic darts while on a leash to eat a mouth full of it, while jerking our arms off. Climbing it is also one of his favourites.

While Jeff was away, it was sure a good reminder of how nice it is to operate in life as a good partnership! Life is pretty awesome when we both do some of the work. When he is gone, I was walking Hank every day, shovelling, hauling the firewood, getting the groceries, and the mail. And working and attending board meetings (I’m on 3 board of directors for non profit organizations in town now). While I think it is good and healthy for us to do our own thing and have time by ourselves occasionally, it is nice to have him home again.

He had a snowy week on his snowmobile, hours of rough riding, and came home without a bison, with broken snowshoes, and was sore and tired.

The day before he left, I was looking for raisin bread recipes to prep some food for the week. I stumbled on a dutch raisin and currant bread recipe online. I decided to give it a try! It turned out to be rather crazy. SO many raisins and currants. Like the motherlode. It was most ridiculous to try to knead. And then the dough was so heavy with raisins and currants that it barely rose at all.

And somehow it turned into the closest tasting bread to my Grandfather’s raisin bread that I’ve ever made. It was dense. Full of raisins and currants and candied peel. And with the crispiest crust. It needed sawing, not cutting. So delicious I ate this most of the time Jeff was gone. I really liked it! If it would have rose just a bit more it would have been better.

Here’s the recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/258333/krentenbrood-van-bakker-veerman-currant-and-raisin-bread/

And here’s a picture of a loaf of it half way through:

We got another 6 inches of snow in the last couple of days. The yard is now totally full. How high is that fence? I think it is 4 feet between us and the Telegraph office.

Hank is a really particular pooper. He’s been pacing and squatting and unhappy with the snow hitting his butt when he squats. So Jeff shovelled him out another path to help him out. Apparently it worked too! HA!

People are stuck all over town, or just decide to walk and stop shovelling their driveways. There is just no where else to PUT the snow. Some people are shovelling it off their roofs. But then your house is actually buried and you really need to find SOMEWHERE to put it. I don’t know how our neighbour’s tin shed is holding all that snow up still:

We have a boardwalk sidewalk out front, just the length of 4 houses. It used to go the full length of 7th Avenue I’m told, but now just this piece is left, maybe for the look of the historic Telegraph office beside our house. If you are “lucky” enough to have a boardwalk in front of your house or business, you must keep it shovelled. Although it is unlikely we’d get a ticket back here on 7th, way out of the downtown core, for not shovelling. But there is no doubt a bit of peer pressure between neighbours to not be the worst shoveller. So here’s what I tackled yesterday after the snowfall:

Didn’t take too long! All these core muscles I’ve been building with my home workouts is paying off!

Here’s a couple little videos from around our deck and back of the house:

Tonight we went for a walk with Hank around 6:45pm. And it isn’t totally dark yet!! The days are getting noticeably longer! It’s getting more difficult to tell what is a snowbank and what is a car that hasn’t been driven in a couple days: