City girl living on a farm, Part 2 - The snow machine

I have talked about living on a farm in a few of my previous posts. This farm is very different than what you might expect. Right now, close your eyes and imagine a farm. You might think of fields of corn, or maybe cows in a pasture. When you pull up to our farm the first thing you might notice is our barn, built in 1885 out of native timber. Next you would see our little white farmhouse, built even before the barn. It's a very simple farm house. The family that owned the farm before us were hay farmers. In our 3 bedroom house lived 2 grandparents, 2 parents, and 6 children. Herman Campbell, the father of the 6 children lived to be 98 years old and to his dying day still used an outhouse, rather than an indoor bathroom.

My husband and I both grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh with no experience with a rural way of life. When I moved to the farm from the city, I was pretty bored, especially in the winter. There was nothing to do because it was so cold outside and most of the winter months there was so much snow. My husband and I started getting stir crazy. That first winter we bought snowboards and a snowmobile. We attached the snowboards to the snowmobile and would take turns pulling each other around in the snow. After another year this plan morphed into my husband wondering if he could make some kind of tow rope for skiing. We have a bunch of hills on the farm, it would be the perfect place. The first iteration of this idea involved an old yamaha motor and a pulley attached to his truck, while on the other end was another pulley attached to his 4 wheeler. He used pretty heavy duty rope and was able to get the motor working and we were in business. Here are a few photos of the original setup:

Motor and pulley system attached to the truck

Here you can see my husband going up the hill, holding onto the tow rope

Going up the hill

This worked out great but my husband, being my husband, began hatching a plan for something even more grand. The next year he bought a lot more rope and relocated the tow rope to a bigger hill. This hill would go up from our barn to the tree line at the top of the hill. The barn would serve as our home base. At the top of the hill, this time, the motor and pulley were attached to a large tree. At the bottom, we now used an old tractor with a very high boom. This way we could get the pulley system high in the air so that the rope would be off the ground. Here is a picture and video of the new system at the bottom of the hill, in front of the barn. You can see the pulley in the air on the boom of the tractor:

Here is a picture of the ski hill, which you will notice is perfectly groomed:

I'm sure you might be wondering, what the heck was that black machine with the tracks sitting in front of the tractor/pulley system. Well that my friends is what my husband created to groom the ski hill. Of course, you must have a perfectly groomed hill! To create this monstrosity, my husband found an old GEO tracker online (something similar to a jeep but cheaper). He installed the tracks on it in place of tires so it moves like a tank. He then welded pieces of steel to attach behind it to drag the snow into perfect beautiful tracks. Here are some pictures of the tracker doing it's job on the hill:

Here is a pic and video of everyone enjoying the hill. We get tons of friends from town that join us when we get a big snow. We have probably taught close to 40 kids how to ski. Don't worry, us adults also have plenty of fun!

And finally, how do we keep warm? My husband built this stove for us. It looks like a rocket. So, remember when you closed your eyes and imagined a farm? Is this what you had in mind?