Hardin Brothers Landscaping

Heavy Rains and New Spring Growth

Besides a few small snows and one week of bitter cold temperatures, we’ve had a very mild winter at Amber Ranches. Even though some of our biggest snows come in March, springtime is here! All the rain and warm weather has allowed some of our spring plants to pop up. Wild mountain leeks (more commonly known as “ramps” have also popped out of the ground. If you haven’t tried them, they taste pretty much like an onion. If you don’t know how to find and harvest them, just let me know and I’ll be glad to help you. Besides all the spring growth it’s also good to see all our creeks and ponds full of water. Springtime is generally when they are at their fulletst.

Maintaining our Ditches and Culverts

It’s a continuous job trying to keep our ditches and culverts clean of sticks, leaves, and road bond washout from our roads. Blowing leaves out of ditches and building small rock dams in front of our culverts helps to prevent problems, but big rains still require good old fashioned shoveling and pitchforking to keep things maintained. As you can see in the photos below, we have also been constructing rock catch basins in front of our culverts to catch leaves, sticks, mud and gravel runoff from clogging our culverts.

Hardin Brothers Hardscaping

For those interested in having walkways, stepping stones, walls or other hardscaping projects constructed on their properties, please email me at joshual.logan.hardin@gmail.com or text/call me at 828-208-1986. The photos below are some examples of work I’ve done in the past…

Old Bald “Ball” Road Winter Hike

Each season, I like to hike the Old Bald Road (pronounced “Ball” Road by locals). Each season has unique things to offer. This winter, I hiked the trail with some close friends and my dog Ruth. Below are some photos I took along the hike. If anyone is interested in joining me on a spring hike, please let me know. It’s now ramp season, so if you’d like to harvest ramps with me, I will also show you how. A permit is needed to harvest ramps in the national forest, but there are plenty of ramps on my property which I’d be glad to help you harvest.

The historical Bald “Ball” Road starts on Blevins Branch Road near the Buladean Presbyterian Church and ends up on top of Roan Mountain at the Cloudland Hotel historical remains (it went out of business and then eventually burnt up in the early 1900s). Many locals were employed by the hotel in the late 1800s-early 1900s. Besides making, transporting, and selling bootlegged liquor, employment at the hotel was one of the only ways old subsistence farmers from this area could make money. My Great Great Granddaddy David Hughes (pictured below) would transport his extra farm produce up the Bald “Ball” Road and sell it to the hotel. He was also employed as a cook up there where he learned how to make lite (loaf) bread.