Cloute Inc.

About Cloute Inc.

January in Fort Atkinson has a sound to it: skate blades scraping at Haumerson's Pond, and somewhere three streets over, a plow blade finding pavement. Cloute Inc. is on the second sound — clearing driveways through the cold months, shoveling walks and stoops down to bare footing, laying salt so the ice doesn't get a second try overnight. When the Rock River lets its ice go and the ground turns green again, the same trucks come back for mowing, trimming, edging and the cleanups that bracket a Wisconsin growing season. Two kinds of work, one town, all twelve months of it. The measure of both is the same: you look out the window and there's simply nothing in your way.