This is a bad week for winder production. When we finally reached the ranch trail last night we discovered that rather than having had dried out like it has in Denver, not even all of the snow had finished melting, but plenty of it had, and the trail was a swamp of standing water and deep penetrated mud. I drove in a couple hundred feet and decided to turn around. We really barely made it out even from just the short way in. I’m pretty sure we would have gotten seriously stuck if we had gone much further.
This failed trip to the ranch cost us about $120 and completely wasted 18 man hours that could have been spent doing other work, of which there is plenty to be done. 
So, I can’t make any new winder parts this week. Luckily most of the winders that are due this week had their parts made last week, so I can still ship mostly on time. But if I can’t get in again next week, quite a few winders will have to be late, a situation that grieves me greatly.
I am going to update the lead time on the web site to “4 weeks, weather permitting” because I don’t have much hope of the road being passable any time real soon. Either we need a blisteringly cold night when we go down so all the mud and water freezes, or we need a week of very warm and dry weather to boil off all the water and dry out the ground. Looking at the weather, I don’t see any of that happening. There is still plenty of snow on the ground, which will slowly melt over the following weeks and just make the situation worse.
I bet you next year, after I’ve built the real road, with proper drainage and a gravel surface, we will have an unseasonably dry and warm winter with no mud anyway. I really wish I had a tractor.
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