College Hill Farm

  Groundhogs day is a special day for us. About 38 years ago we married in the middle of an ice storm on Groundhogs Day. My father and mother had the ceremony in their living room. There was a “Saps Cake” that had said “Happy Birthday” on it. They scraped that off, bought some donuts and made coffee. Because of the ice storm dad had to go and get the minister in 4x4 truck. My next door neighbor and his wife and kids came over. Crystals mom and her 2 sisters were also there. Crystal had a little white dress that she used and I had a pair of khaki pants and shirt and tie. We had gone 3 days prior and got the marriage license. I think, back then, it cost $22. The minister was a friend of the family for years and years. I considered him and his wife and children as family. My friend from next door was my best man and photographer. Apparently it had been a tough night for him because he took all the pictures with the lens cap on. So there are no pictures of our wedding. However, I think t

 

  Well, this year can just go.......... You fill in the blank. We missed Thanksgiving with the kids because we got Covid. We are gonna miss Christmas Dinner together because of this weather and travel conditions. It could be worse. 2020 thru 2022 have been tough years. Sickness has ruled the land, or at least the Eldridges part of it. I hope 2023 does a better job. I like it when everything runs smooth. Shush!!! Don’t say that out loud, Karma! We are not the only folks on the planet to have a tough year. There have been many tough years through the ages. It is the nature of our human frailty. I don’t know anyone personally who will get out of it alive. I know a few who act like they are gonna fly away but I don’t trust them and you shouldn’t either. I send up a prayer for all those who have it better or worse than me. Back in the middle ages the Black Death caused such a decline in population that the surviving population had opportunities for land and prosperity. It was such good ti

When the boys were little Crystal used to cook Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day. This was such a mistake. One day one of her sisters said “you should cook dinner on Christmas Eve and have leftovers for Christmas Day.” That was a life changing event. It made Christmas Day so much more enjoyable. You could allow the kids to get up and enjoy their things with no worries about what there is to eat. We could just enjoy the day and the kids could play with their presents as we watched without any worries about what needed to go on and what needed to be cleaned up. Christmas dinner is not just the cooking. There is the preparation, the cooking, the timing so everything remains hot, and afterward there is the major clean up. I think about us and the cleanup that we do but we have a dish washer. Then I think of mom. She had no electronic dish washer and no paper platers. Mom said that she did Christmas dinner in days. She made the pumpkin pies and fudge 2 days before. She cooked the shuck be

  I remember growing up as a kid. I have friends that I had since elementary school, children that I grew up with from elementary school through high school. We played little league baseball and sandlot football together. We spent days on the river using car tops as gondola’s poling up and down the river in search of that best fishing of swimming hole. Hunting squirrel and camping out in the woods were some of our favorite things. We talked about all the stuff about growing up and even had the occasional fistfight. It is where I learned exactly how good my parents really were. Fast forward 10 years and I was off to college. While there for 4 years I established lifelong friends and work colleagues that I have depended on over the years and them on me. Then fast forward 20 yrs again and there are the work friends. We depend on each other to reach our professional goals and we are friends but often we are so different we will never be those close friends of youth. Life has a way of sep

  Not the kind of brownies you are thinking about but I sure did crave brownies while we were sick with Covid. We were quarantining and had gone through all the sweet treats in the house. Now Crystal seems to always have a box of brownie mix in the cupboard but apparently we had gone through them all, dang kids. So for the last 4 days of our self imposed quarantine we were sweet less. Oh the humanity! Debbie is not that little skinny girl on the box!!!! But those were not the brownies I was referring too. As we approach Christmas I think about the story of the old shoemaker. He is having a hard time keeping up and is falling behind. The elves/brownies show up and made him pairs of shoes every night that he would discover in the morning.   Well, I don’t need shoe elves I need mess destroying brownies. This year I have been the messiest builder ever. Every building here at College Hill Farm is in disarray. Even my computer table in the basement looks like a bomb has blown up around it.

  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