Snow removal in Solina, on roads that belong to Clarington.

Solina sits where Solina Road crosses Concession Road 6, three kilometres west of Hampton. Neither road is on Durham Region's numbered list. Hampton has Taunton Road and Tyrone has Liberty Street. Solina has nothing of the kind, so every road reaching the crossroads belongs to Clarington.

Concession roads sit in Clarington's first priority tier, so the roads into the crossroads are cleared early in the order. What one authority means in practice is one fleet: 892 kilometres of municipal road, and a published window of up to 24 hours for plowing to be completed.

The first pass is the one that traps you

Most people expect to be snowed in by snowfall. Out here you are more often sealed in by the plow. A blade on Concession 6 at five in the morning is good news for getting to work and bad news for the ten metres between your garage and the road, because what it moves off the lane lands in a compacted ridge across your entrance.

Clarington lists drifting snow first among the conditions it asks residents to report, and its sidewalk bylaw talks about clearing at full width or when drifting occurs. When a municipality writes drifting into a bylaw it is naming its worst winter condition, and on open farmland there is very little between a north wind and your entrance.

The order the route runs in, and why it does not move with the weather

Three centimetres measured on the ground starts it. Not a forecast, and not a telephone call from you at half past four. After that the sequence is fixed. Commercial and medical access go overnight. Platinum is cleared to a 6:30 AM target. Gold follows at a 7 AM target. Silver takes its windrow pass in the daytime, by 5 PM. The two morning times are targets and not guarantees, and on a morning when the wind has been rebuilding your entrance since four, a fixed order is the part that is actually worth something.

Silver is the windrow tier and it does not plow the driveway. It also carries no salting at any depth, which on a drifting morning matters rather more than the difference in price does. Exactly what Silver includes is set out in full on the Hampton page, along with the paid urban program that no address out here can register for.

If there is a tractor in the barn already

A fair number of properties out this way have one, with a blade or a bucket on the front and somebody at home who knows how to run it. If that is you, do not hire me for the lane. You will do it cheaper than I can and you will do it on your own schedule, and I am not going to pretend otherwise to win the work. What I would still think about is the ice on the walk and the steps, because that is where people actually fall. A salt only trip is $25 plus HST, and you can ask for that on its own without a membership underneath it.

Farm lane or village lot: which band your Solina property is in

There are ordinary lots on the crossroads and there is nothing ordinary about the land around them, so both readings are published rather than worked out at your gate.

Band	Lot	Seasonal snow	Gold membership
Standard.	Up to 0.35 acre	$800 small, $975 standard, $1,200 large	$189 a month
Estate.	0.35 to 1.0 acre, or a driveway over 100 ft	$1,750	$349 a month
Grand Estate.	1.0 to 3.0 acres, or a laneway over 250 ft	$2,600	$519 a month

Add HST to each figure. Beyond 400 feet a lane adds $200 for each further 100 feet, and the band follows whichever reading is larger, the lot or the lane. A salt only call is $25 and a windrow call is $45. Compare the three memberships.

Read next

• Snow removal in Hampton, three kilometres east, where two road authorities meet and the windrow rules live.
• Snow removal in Enniskillen, north on the moraine, where the lanes climb and salt does the work.
• All three memberships, and which of them actually plows the driveway.