Branch Brook Excavating

About Branch Brook Excavating

Snow finds Shrewsbury first. The town climbs from Cuttingsville toward Shrewsbury Peak on dirt roads that pitch and switch back, and a storm that falls as rain in the valley is four inches at the height of land. Branch Brook Excavating plows those grades — driveways, turnarounds and private lanes — widening the banks with each storm so there is somewhere left for February to go, and sanding the steep pitches where a truck would otherwise sit and spin. Winter up here gets measured in feet rather than inches, and the job is to keep a mountain road behaving like a road. There is a particular pleasure in the last pass at daybreak: the drive cut square, woodsmoke going straight up, the whole hill quiet.