College Hill Farm

  I have always been different from the rest of my family, not in many ways but a few. I was always a dreamer. I had a very vivid imagination and always wanted to know why and how things worked. My oldest brother was not concerned with such things. Sometimes I wonder if he thought about much at all. But I love him just the way he is, even if we cannot manage to get along and I have to love him from afar. My 2 nd older brother is a good guy. He knows what he wants and works toward it. He has an attitude very similar to mine, get it done! He never liked school but was very mechanically inclined like dad. Electrician, welder, fabricator, mechanic, and entrepreneur are all monikers that could describe him. Like me if something doesn’t exist he will make it up out of the stuff he has available. I don’t know if this is something we learned from our father and grandfather of if this is just the way we are hard wired. Me, I’m a thinker and doer. Sometimes my thinking gets me in over my he

  Since I was in Farmer Morgans shop class in the 8 th grade I have been very crafty. I remember the first craft I made was with hand tools. We each got a piece of Lucite Rod about 3” in diameter. We had to slice off a piece of that rod and then take that slice and turn it into a piece of jewelry. If you have ever sanded plastic you know that dilemma. I cut my piece but my saw meandered a little so I had a lot of sanding just to get it to the right thickness. The coping saw was the first tool I used with a clamped work piece. I clamped down that piece of Lucite and made the largest heart I could out of it. Cutting with a coping saw in plastic is an odd feeling. But I managed to get it accomplished without a lot of meandering. But there was enough that the sanding was a tremendous job. Today I would throw it on the belt or spindle sander and knock it out in short order. We were not allowed to use power tools in the 8 th grade. So hand sanding was the order of the day. I quickly lear

  Well this year at College Hill Farm we are working on so many construction projects that I don’t know how much gardening I will be doing. With my health conditions and dead of summer temps work is tough on me so I have to work early morning during the summer. But, right now the temps are right for me to work outside all day long. But, this is when I can do those construction projects. It is also time to get to be planting those gardens. Right at this moment our freezers and pantry are still pretty full. Since the pandemic we have not had as many visitors and have not eaten down our supplies like in regular years. So we still have a pretty full larder. So this year I will have to pare back the garden a little and concentrate on the building projects. I know! You come to the homestead and to see homesteading stuff. Well building tractor sheds, goat barns, greenhouses, etc. are all vital homestead infrastructure. I worry that my speed at production of these items will be the boring

 “Winters a long time going” Bear Claw – Jeremiah Johnson – My favorite movie.  Here it is about to turn March. If you haven’t noticed I try to keep a stack of ponderings ahead for the blog. This will come out the 2nd week of March and I am writing it this 28th day of February. I sometimes do this with the videos. That way I am kind of consistent with having content even when my old body does not want to cooperate.  This getting old stuff is not for whimps. I talk to my brother regularly on this topic. He is five and a half years older than me and is feeling the effects of his infirmities too. Of course we lament to each other about what ailments are plaguing us and banter back and forth about whether we will outlive dad. My dad died of Black Lung/Silicosis and colon cancer back in 1997. He was only 67 years old. My brother turns 66 this year and I turn 60. So that magical date looms large. Now on dads side of the family counting him and all the men and women I know their average age a

  My property is one big mud hole. When we take a break in January from our social media there are actually 2 reasons. In the last couple of years it is like the winter cold creeps into every bone in my body. I don’t know if it is an age thing or a Multiple Sclerosis thing. Either way it exacts a toll that I am loath to pay. The second reason is that in January the sun is seldom out here. Often 4 days out of the week we are getting some kind of precipitation. Thus filming is a hard thing to accomplish when the ground is just saturated. So, I never know if I can stay busy enough to get something on video every week. So far this January we have received 5.0 inches of rain by my rain gauge, as of January 22 nd and it is raining again.   So that is over an inch per week. Also our Max Temperature this January has been 66 degrees F and our minimum has been 22F. So nothing is freezing much and nothing is drying out much so the ground is an absolute mud hole. We have plenty of medium size c

  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