College Hill Farm

  For the last 2 weeks Crystal and I have been battling Covid. I tested positive within a day of having symptoms. My first symptom was very weird. I could not lift my right leg to step up on a chair or climb into my truck. Well, I thought it was just my MS acting up. I had no outward signs of anything. Fast forward 2 days and I had all the flu like symptoms. We have had all the booster shots available. We even got our flu shot already this year. So I decided to use one of those rapid tests. Sure enough I was positive for Covid 19. Thank goodness it has not been much worse than the flu except for the lingering fatigue. It put off our family Thanksgiving. It has also put off some of our building projects. Now I don’t know if I am just getting older or if I am accumulating a level of disability that makes me exceptionally slow at building. However, I have come to an excruciatingly slow pace at building this year. Just 5 years ago I know the pace would be much greater. We bought this hom

  As we approach the holiday season we look at what is important and who we love most. At my age I look back at the people in my life. Today I was checking the obituaries in my hometown. Since we moved away the local mortuary sites are some of the number one sources of information on how the folks at home are doing. I noticed someone had died that I played basketball and football against in the 8 th grade. He is nearly, within a month or two, the same age as me. It set me to thinking about what is important and who is important in my life. Crystal and I married nearly 40 yrs ago. We had two biological children of our own and one that did not survive pregnancy. Both have grown into good men. They are both married and one is a math teacher and the other is a lieutenant in the prison system. Both are in their early 30’s and are advancing in their careers. They married college girls who are also working on careers of their own. Neither couple has had any children so far. I am so proud o

Here at College Hill Farm we enjoy the comfort of Electricity. We set our thermostat and the electric heat comes on and goes off without any great concern. This is a recent convenience. Many preppers today worry about the electric grid going down. They estimate that human civilization will collapse if an electromagnetic storm of proportion enough to take out our electrical grid hits the planet or they prep for a great EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack. I am here to tell you that the electrical grid going down will not be the end of society! We are only 2 generations away from non electric homes. My grandparents didn’t have electricity till they were in their late 30’s. Mom and Dad probably got electricity when she was in her teens. Automobiles were becoming very common in Appalachia long before electricity was. Oh sure some of the cities had electricity and some of the coal mines had electricity but most of the rural areas didn’t get widespread electrical service until probably the

  My parents were very industrious. My mother grew up in extreme poverty. Her father was killed in a gun battle in Evarts in 1938 – but that is for another story. So Granny had to raise them as best she could with the sweat of her brow and the pain in her back, never forgetting her morals. Granny was hard on mom and her brother. Of course she was, there was no social safety net so she relied on hard work from both her and her children. Mom said that “sometimes mommy bordered on cruel. If she hadn’t we wouldn’t have had enough to eat.” Mom, like so many other Appalachian women, quit school in the 8 th grade and was married when she was 15 yrs old. She married a man who was very cruel. She said he was nice till they married and then he would burn her clothes and beat her if she let him. She divorced him 2 yrs later but had already had my eldest brother. She had to move back in with her mother who could barely afford to keep her own head above water too. So, six months later she remarr

  As we go into the Thanksgiving time of year I am thankful for inside plumbing!   Growing up in Michigan for the first 8 yrs of life scarred me forever. We had inside plumbing. It was a travesty to a mountain child. I remember my first introduction to the outside toilet when I was 3 yrs old. Now we had traveled back down to my grandparents in eastern Kentucky many times. They had outside toilets. But as a toddler and just learning I don’t remember their outside toilets till I was 4 or so. But I was introduced to the outside toilet when I still lived in Michigan. Dad loved to take us camping at a campground called Bald Mountain totally primitive camping no utilities whatsoever. There was a lake with rainbow trout and channel catfish and we spent many a weekend and week at the park. I guess it was the closest thing that he could muster to being home in Kentucky. The campground had no facilities. It had a single water spigot for everyone and pit toilets. Now if you have ever used a p

  I posted this on our College Hill Farm Website some time ago. Since the website is now defunct and with Halloween fast approaching I thought it appropriate to revive it for this site.   Now my family, especially my grandparents, loved to tell tales to us kids. Whether it was haint(ghost) tales, myths, or hunting excursions. There was always a tale to be told sitting on the porch breaking beans or shelling corn. Granny, mom’s mother, loved to tell haint tales. Every time we were working on the porch breaking beans we would be talking of old times and a haint tale or two would come about. They were always told as if she was there and witnessed the event as all good tales are. My great uncle Floyd used to say never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Now that is the way of it in Appalachia, the old folks told family lore and information by way of oral traditions. The tales always included sisters, brothers, grandparents, so you had a frame of reference and you could dr

  Harlan County is not owned by the people who live there. I know some will argue with this but it is true. My home county is actually 80% owned by absentee land owners. Many are large coal or gas corporations sitting on the land waiting for a time when it would be economically feasible to get at the minerals below. Even some of the folks that own the land don’t even own the minerals nor timber on it. At one time people could purchase your rights to minerals or timber and leave you the land. This practice lead to all sorts of strife in the Appalachian Mountains. But, that is not what this piece is about. It is about the abundance left behind by these absentee land owners. My great grandmother was a granny doctor of sorts. She was an herbalist that knew an herb for every human frailty. Some called them Granny Women, Granny Doctors, Granny Witches, or Granny Sages. She didn’t know about herbs grown in China or Russia or the far flung places in the world. She knew about the herbs that g