McElvogue outdoors services

About McElvogue outdoors services

Outside Earlham the pavement gives way to gravel fast, and the farm lanes running back from those roads can stretch a quarter mile or more before they reach a house, plenty of room for a Madison County wind to load a lane with snow the whole way. McElvogue outdoors services runs those lanes as readily as it runs a short in-town driveway, clearing the long stretches back to farmsteads tucked among the hills west of Winterset's covered bridges. Snow moves differently on open ground than it does between houses, drifting into the low swales that cross so many of these lanes, and the work often means more than one pass to keep a route open through a hard blow. Evenings out here can turn a plowed lane into a dark ribbon under a wide, clear sky once the clouds break behind a storm. The company covers Earlham's in-town streets too, but it's the outlying properties, the ones furthest from a paved road, that shape most of a winter's work.