The History of Honey Hill Farm, Part 4

We loaded the car on Saturday morning, and drove back to the farm--but we couldn't get up the driveway! We nearly slid off, in fact. We didn't unload, but we DID check the house. The heat was still running. It snowed all day. It snowed into the night. Sunday morning, church was cancelled. But the roads were better than Saturday. Sunday was sunny and bright and COLD. We looked on Craigslist to find someone to plow our 1/4-mile driveway. He agreed to meet us there at 10AM. We had about 16" of snow. We drove back to the farm. I cleared the concrete footer on the edge of the road so we had a place to park, and then I started putting up our mailbox. It was 18F and about 10MPH breeze. He never showed. He even claimed he had been there, waiting for us, for 1/2 hour. In the end, our new neighbor, Tom, plowed the drive for us. We moved stuff in. The water had stopped flowing, but it turned out it was the clogged water filter, not frozen pipes. We put the filter into BYPASS, and water flowed. Then the oil ran out again. While Debbie puttered around the farm, Steven ran off to buy more kerosene. But when he returned, the oil truck came up the driveway behind him. On Monday, Debbie spent most of the day at the farm, so she was there when the phone guy arrived. He fiddled around, plugged in his test unit, and said, "Yup. You've got service." But Debbie didn't have a phone cord to plug in her phone. That night, we loaded up another carload, then stopped by the local home hardware store, Lowe's, for STUFF: water filters, smoke detectors, phone cords. But we were too tired to drive to the farm. Tuesday morning, Steve drove to the farm and unloaded the car. Driving in, he spotted a fox dodging across the driveway, which means we'll have to guard our chickens well. Then he tried the commute to work. When Debbie came by, she reported that the phones didn't seem to work. Wednesday, Debbie made Steve dinner at the farm. But he had to pick up a working phone from the old house first. We replaced water filters, humidifier pads, furnace filters... The phone line was DEAD, both inside the house, and outside at the Verizon NID. So we reported it to Verizon on Thursday, 4 February. Their expected repair date: 22 February 2010. That day, our realtor informed us that the banks had finally signed off on the title, and it was OURS! We would not have to go through settlement again, and there was much rejoicing. Meanwhile, we had received our first piece of mail: A FORECLOSURE NOTICE?!?!