DirtWorks of Virginia

About DirtWorks of Virginia

Out along Pouncey Tract Road the streetlights go amber in an ice storm and every branch grows a glass skin. DirtWorks of Virginia is out in it — plowing, clearing driveways and walks, spreading salt on the slick pitch where a Short Pump apron tips down toward the road. Winter here rarely announces itself a week ahead; it arrives overnight, heavy and wet, and it has to be moved before the county wakes up. The reward is the sound of a blade finding pavement and a clean rectangle of asphalt at sunrise while the loblollies still carry their load. From Short Pump west toward Goochland and Manakin-Sabot, that is the whole job, storm by storm.