College Hill Farm

  About 3 am last night the coyotes on the property must have caught something just outside my house. There was a terrible ruckus and the sounds of animals fighting. Something was definitely killed out there last night, the cries were just too pitiful. It only lasted a minute or two and all was quiet. By the time I got to the window all was quiet and none of the motion lights had gone off. So, I can only guess as to what was going on. Just after I had lain back down the coyotes started that blasted singing. It is such a lonesome eerie sound at 3 in the morning. I hoped my two barn cats were not on the receiving end of the attack. Before I wrote this I went out to give them a little food and both Fuzzy and Ghost were waiting patiently. So my only hope is they caught that dang groundhog that has been plaguing me and my garden. Now when I was about 13 years old, back in Harlan County Kentucky, I spent plenty of winters trapping. We didn’t have coyotes back then. There are plenty of them

  Well it is mid winter and time to start thinking about trees for the upcoming year. This piece will come out the 2 nd week in February and there is still time to get that pruning in. Also, it is time to start those grafting efforts but that is a topic for another day. Let’s start off with pruning. It is actually mid January and I need to prune my fruit trees to get ready for the upcoming season. You can prune fruit trees any time in the dormant cycle. You can even selectively prune during the summer if need be. But, we usually prune any time between November and February. We are in growing zone 6 in the United States for comparison for you folks that live overseas or not within the US, our climate in zone 6 means we experience cold winters and warm summers. Our lowest temps usually are never below -10F(-23C). Frost dates are: last frost April 15 and First Frost Nov 1 st . This has changed some since I was a kid, the growing season has lengthened. With a hardy growing season of bet

  The bible talks about how “your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” This seems very prophetic indeed.   For the last few weeks I have been having very vivid dreams. I am not under any unusual stress that I am aware of other than the stress of winter.   Now I have always been one to dream vividly. From my late 20’s to my mid 40’s I seldom had a dream I can remember. I have had many instances of dreaming as a child that later came to pass. I would dream weird stuff like catching a big fish behind our house in the river or hitting a homerun in a specific baseball game.   These would then happen and I would have a déjà vu moment. As a young child I had a very vivid imagination. My imagination was every bit as vivid as Ralphie in the Christmas Story movie. I would imagine all sorts of scenarios for anything that was going on in my life. My brothers didn’t do this. They were always making fun of me for it. I knew I was different from them in many ways. I was alwa

  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