We’ve had some huge drifts on Sherpe Road this winter. It’s reminiscent of past winters when I was young. At one time we were the only farm with access on this road. There wasn’t a lot of traffic traveling past our farm. Most days the mailman and milk hauler were the only people who used our road. It wasn’t exactly a place where you had to worry about traffic backups, unless you got behind our tractor pulling a wagon.
When we had big snowstorms, our road drifted shut and nobody came or went until the snowplow went through and opened it up. Arvid Harpestad was the snowplow operator in our area. He lived a couple of miles from our farm.
When Arvid arrived, he also plowed out our driveway and shoved the snow away from the machine shed so Dad could get the tractor out. He usually arrived around coffee time and Dad would invite him in to warm up and have some coffee. As anyone with Norwegian ancestry knows, coffee time was mid-morning and mid-afternoon. It wasn’t just a cup of coffee; it also included sandwiches, homemade cookies or cake, and sometimes even pie. I suspect Arvid timed it so he’d be plowing our road around coffee time. He knew my mother was a great cook and baker. If I had been operating a snowplow I’d have done the same.
The folks appreciated getting our road, driveway, and farmyard opened again so the mail could get to us and the milk hauler could pick up the milk and get it to the creamery. It also made it easier for us to get to school, which didn’t have the same degree of appreciation among us kids as it did our parents. Because Arvid was so good about giving us access to the outside world again, the least they could do was offer him some food and a chance to sit near the stove and warm up.
Arvid was a big man, built a lot like my father. I was in awe of him being able to operate that big snowplow. In the summertime he operated the road grader to smooth out our gravel road. I should mention, when I was young our road and most side roads were dirt or gravel, didn’t have names, and farms didn’t have fire numbers to designate their address. It wasn’t until later that names were assigned to all country roads and ours became Sherpe Road.
It makes you wonder how strangers ever found where someone lived. In our case we told people we lived on the side road west of Highway 14, located halfway between Tri-State Breeders and Smith School. Because we weren’t that far off the highway we weren’t very hard to find, except after a big snowstorm when huge drifts blocked our road. If a person came after coffee time, they had a much better chance of finding the road open after Arvid and his snowplow had arrived to dig us out.
David Sherpe and big drifts on Sherpe Road - 1959.
We also loved those big snow banks he left alongside the road. They were great to dig tunnels and snow caves in. Those big banks weren’t so great when the wind blew, which it did on a regular basis, and still does today, along Sherpe Road. Then the road filled back in and we were snowbound again until Arvid arrived to rescue us. The problem was, the bigger the snow banks became, the harder it was to keep them open because of the blowing and drifting snow.
Winters were tough for farmers who lived on country roads, far from a main highway. When roads were drifted shut they had to wait until the snowplow arrived. If roads were blocked for several days, they ran out of cans and containers to put the milk in. If they lived close enough to a road that had been opened, they hauled the cans on sleds over the frozen fields. Tractors were useless because they could get through heavy drifts either.
Several times Dad had to put the milk cans on a stone boat and physically pull it from the barn to the highway about a quarter mile away, where the milk hauler could pick up the cans. It was fairly easy going where the snow was drifted solid and he could walk on the top, but it was tough “sledding” where he kept breaking through the deep snow. Despite the hardships, farmers did whatever it required to get the milk to the creamery so they didn’t have to start dumping it in the snow. Dumping milk was a last resort because that was throwing hard-earned money away, although our many cats and dog loved it.
The huge March snowstorm in 1959 saw a lot of milk dumped when many farms were snowed in for a week. There was nothing else they could do. Everyone who remembers that storm has stories to tell. We spent several days at our grandparents who lived across from Smith School when we couldn’t get home because of the blizzard. It was a blizzard for the ages that people still talk about.
Blizzards, snowdrifts, blocked roads, and cold weather are all a part of our life in the Midwest. As one friend told me, “Winter’s not for sissies.” How true that is.
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