Shovel Snow From a Walk - PEP BB nest.straw.shovelsnow

I didn't manage to take a self-e but I hope this will be enough as it shows the work in progress.  Also, the mailbox is several miles down the road so I focused on the areas where the car goes.

first submitted in oddball

An excessive amount of unseasonably late, wet snow



My trusty shovel.  The snow was fairly shallow when I started, but it kept on snowing.



The starter path



more snow moved. The pile on the side is getting pretty high. The snow appears to be letting up and the sun going down, so I quit for the night. this was a mistake as there was another four inches overnight.



Job done



What's really sad is we had the same again over the next few days.  Since I'm the only one at home that can do this kind of labour, and we were out of hot cocoa, it made for some interesting days.

It snowed there!


My driveway is a bit over 50' long, and then I shoveled the sidewalk, front walk, and some of the street, too (the city here can't afford to plow very often).

Had enough snow to deal with but not quite enough to get out the snowblower (2" of light stuff).  Shoveled the driveway which is fairly big.

I help one of my friends with his snow removal business so I do a lot of shovelling. Today I went out solo to clear about 4-5cm of snow off of all the driveways he's got contracts for which is seven. Here are pics of one I did. All in all I think it took about 6 minutes as it was light snow and I have learned how to shovel pretty efficiently. I would say it is definitely over 60 ft long but I can measure to be sure next time I do it if the person checking this BB is unsure.

First snow over an inch I've seen in four years... good to be home.  

Wow! I needed snow, to shovel it for the BB ... And there it was! February 7 started with plenty of snow, fallen in the night.
First thing in the morning I did:


Made a photo of the snow in the front yard (before shoveling)


Same view, now a path is shoveled


And shoveled further down the walkway, to get my 60 feet
I wanted to do more, in the other direction, but it started snowing again ...


Seen from the other side, towards my front yard
It is difficult to see, but at some points the snow is really an inch high


Me, trying to get it all on the photo, including myself

This commercial building in my neighborhood houses a volunteer organization which provides resources to the elderly and disabled in the area. My apartment gets shoveled and salted by the management but I saw the snow outside and I figured I could lend a hand and maybe start on this PEP while I’m at it.

Finally, it snowed! It has been snowing here since before midnight last night. Very fine snow coming down sideways and drifting. Covered porches are covered in snow.  I did some snow shoveling.  Where the wind isn't blowing the snow, it is about 4 inches deep.

While staying at Cooper Cabin for the 2022 Garden Master course, I shoveled a pathway from Cooper to shut solar power station. I continued shoveling the pathway until I got to the top of the hill so that I could enjoying the view from there.

Snow! Shoveled!

Walkway from the Abby

Poor cell service at the Abby, I had to upload each individually.
Should be there now.

Seriously? So if my deck was 60 feet long and I shoveled a more normal 18-24" path from the kitchen to the carport, that would count? But because I shoveled roughly 80 feet of 120" width that somehow that fails to be a path? What is the actual purpose of this badge bit, to demonstrate shoveling ability or to see how narrowly defined this whole project can be? I can go shovel 60' through the yard if that would get me approval, but does that actually serve a purpose?

I understand this is Paul's version and thus everything is geared towards the Lab, but what exactly are the skills Otis may be looking for? I want to do these bbs because they encourage me to do many of the activities I've thought about for years. I'm starting with (what I thought were) the simple ones to gain the credits necessary to come to the book signing and learn even more. I've already learned what I thought was a good dish soap isn't, that was useful feedback.

Honestly, I'm in the Otis camp. I have land, and in a few years I'll probably need help from younger backs. I'm even in Montana. If there's a group of folks developing a more generic PEX program, I would love to be involved! Please pm me.

Thanks, Alexa.

Hmmm, let's see what happened here...  looking...  looking....    

Yeah, this is kind of in the "edge" department and I can see why our hard working certifiers rejected it.

Yes you clearly did more work than "shoveling a 60' walk".  But I think the issue comes in with "job creep".  All these BBs are written to have particular requirements.  The program is new and some of them need to be fleshed out a bit.  Your submission helped flesh this one out a bit more.  

For instance, there's a BB for shoveling a driveway.  If you had shoveled a driveway and said that you walk on the driveway so can't it count for this BB, we start to see how the submissions might creep and get excessively creative over time.  The intent of this is to just show that you can shovel a simple walkway.    Doing more is fine as long as the original requirements are also met.

So in summary, your work far exceeded that of the BB but since the BB clearly states the 60' length, that's where the problem arose.

Our certifiers are all volunteers so we try to keep things clear and easy for them so that they're willing to continue to certify.  So I'm going to respect their work and agree with their rejection in this case.  Sorry and I hope you understand!

Thanks Mike. I will try harder to follow the descriptions verbatim, instead of trying for equivalency or better.

Just curious: if I had shoveled a 24" path up one side of the deck and down the other, leaving snow in the center, 78' total, would that have counted? Or I could shovel a 60' path in a circle in the yard my dog would enjoy using. Frankly, I have no place to shovel a necessary narrow path to, our place is all set up for plowing. I did not see the shovel driveway bb, but I did see plow with a tractor and back blade, but our plow is a front blade on a side-by-side so even if I took the fun of plowing away from my husband I wouldn't get a bb for it! He sometimes uses the tractor bucket to widen an area, but still no back blade.

I'm just trying to get enough bbs to come to the signing, but I'm getting more demerits than credits, oops! Wry grin.

Thanks, Alexa.

Yes, shoveling a path in the yard would count.  Shoveling a circuit around your deck would probably count too, I guess.  It's kinda stretching the bounds of a "walkway" but it would probably pass depending on which certifier sees it.

Good luck and I'm sure we'll see you in the spring.  Lots of BBs in Nest that can be done in the winter.  And they don't have to be Sand level BBs for the BB20 event...

One of our future landscaping plans is a meditation spiral. This morning's snow gave me the idea of a meditation oval? The snow in front of the house gets a bit built up, while the part of the deck past the house was blown clear today, so I took the measurement on the protected step to show actual snow depth. The big lesson was a meditation walk just outside the door is far more likely to get used than one further down the yard, suggesting the landscape planning may need to be tweaked.

Hi! We got about 4 inches of snow last night, but I was shoveling one of our paths that isn’t regularly shoveled, so it was almost up to my knees. Mostly due to the wind. The length of this stretch was at least 30 meters.