Batten DirtWorks

About Batten DirtWorks

Templeton keeps its winters up on high ground, where the pines of Otter River State Forest hold snow long after the lower valleys have let go of it. Batten DirtWorks works those storms — plowing driveways and lots, opening walkways, laying sand down where a slope has turned glassy overnight. The good part is arriving in the dark and leaving behind a clean rectangle of pavement, edges squared, before the first commute of the morning. Snow up here comes sideways off the ridge and doesn't apologize, so the routes run through Baldwinville, East Templeton, and out toward Phillipston until every drive is passable again. There is a plain pride in a dooryard that looks like the storm somehow skipped it.