Outside Van Meter the land opens up fast, section after section of corn and bean stubble running flat to the horizon, broken only by the windbreaks around a farmstead here and there. Myers Mulching and Dirt Work knows those gravel roads and long farm lanes as well as the two or three streets of town itself, and in a stiff northwest wind it's the lanes that need the second and third pass, since drift can rebuild across a quarter mile of open field faster than a crew can clear it. In town, the work is smaller in scale but no less exact: driveways scraped clean along the streets near the old rail grade, walks opened block to block before the co-op and the school get moving for the day. Evening is often the harder shift out here, when a low sun throws long shadows across drifted snow and makes it easy to misjudge where the shoulder of a lane actually is. By the time full dark falls over the valley, the lanes are passable and the town's short blocks are clear.