We live on a "private road", meaning, there is no city or county maintenance to be had, and anything that happens is for the residents of the neighborhood to take care of. There's 10 of us back here, but as we have come to learn, our wonderful neighbor who moved away a couple years ago was basically the sole caretaker of all things maintenance (when it snowed, he plowed, when weeds grew on the side of the road, he pulled them), and when he moved away, no one really stepped in to fill that void. Where that leaves us is after our record-breaking 16 inches of snow on the ground, our road is nearly impassible. It has been completely impassible off and on over the last 2 weeks, and while we are thawing out up here, as of this morning the road was basically covered with deep ruts in about 10 inches of slush, and anyone not driving an SUV didn't have the clearance to drive on the road. So, Jamie and I got seriously motivated and decided to shovel the road. I had called around to see about hiring someone to plow the road, but at $250 minimum, we decided to give it a go ourselves. Now, our whole road is about 1/4 mile long, but we were primarily concerned with a really bad stretch that we kept getting stuck in. After about an hour of shoveling, we made it up to a neighbor's house whose family joined in the fun. After a few hours, we had cleared about 2/3 of the road which allowed our bobcat-owning neighbor to do a little more clearning and set us all free. Since our garbage hasn't been collected for 2.5 weeks and we haven't gotten any mail, newspaper or UPS deliveries in over a week, we are seriously looking forward to some bare pavement. And slowly, the melthing continues.

 

Another milestone: we moved the chickens back to their coop today after moving them into the barn about 10 days ago due to the cold and snow. They slowed down their egg laying considerably while in the barn, and after I woke up last night to hear the rooster doing his thing at 2am, I thought it best to give some peace to the goats and donkey once again.

 

Since I can count on one hand the number of times we've left the house in the last 2 weeks due to being snow-bound, Zoe is showing signs that she no longer "needs" the outside world. Over the last few days when I have suggested we try to make a trip into town in an effort to return to normal life, Zoe usually responds with something like, "No, why? We don't need to leave the house anymore." I wonder how long it would take to turn a 4 year old into a recluse? As it is, she greatly prefers to stay in her pajamas all day; I will keep a close eye to ensure she doesn't start using tissue boxes as shoes...