Shumway Services

About Shumway Services

North of Amherst the fields run flat and open toward Mount Toby, and in a January wind the snow crosses them sideways and piles wherever it finds a driveway. Shumway Services goes out into that at four in the morning — plowing drives and lots, clearing walks and doorways, cutting banks back from the road, and putting down sand and salt where the glaze forms. Drifting is the quiet problem: a drive can be clear at midnight and closed by dawn with no new snow at all. So the work is checking, returning and finishing, never simply passing through. Driving home at sunrise past a row of opened driveways is its own kind of reward.