Out past Essexville the land lies as flat as a table and Saginaw Bay sends its weather straight across it, unbroken, all year long. Daugherty's Tough Lawn Care LLC earns the middle word in its name out here: mowing lawns that bake in the bay sun by August, trimming to the ditch and fence, edging drives back to a line the wind has been trying to blur. Autumn comes fast, the beet trucks start moving, and the leaves get cleared before the ground turns heavy. Then the same open country that made summer bright makes winter mean business — drifts across a driveway in an hour, walks glazed by morning — so the plow goes out, the shovels follow, and the salt goes down where the ice sets in first. Nothing about Hampton Township weather is gentle, and neither is the equipment that keeps up with it.