Hardin Brothers Landscaping

Winter Summary

Our winter this year didn’t bring a lot of snow, but it was cold. Due to the cold temperatures, the snow that fell took a long time to melt and caused some treacherous road conditions. It also caused a lot of road damage due to people driving on them.

It’s important to remember that even after the roads have been plowed, they are still not safe to drive on. Plowing speeds up the melting process by removing the bulk of the snow so that the sun, wind and warmer temperatures can penetrate the snow and ice. However, the roads still aren’t safe until the snow is gone and the roads are dry.

After the temperatures warm up enough to melt the snow and ice, the mud that follows is also a major concern. As many residents discovered, mud can be just as dangerous and difficult to drive in as snow and ice. Travelling on muddy roads is not only dangerous, but it causes an incredible amount of damage to our roads.

Why is there so much mud after a snow? The precipitation from the snow and ice saturates our roads and we simply don’t have enough sun and warmth in the winter to dry and harden them back up. The freezing and thawing of our roads only makes the mud worse.

How to stay safe and prevent damaging our roads? Simply stay at home and don’t drive on our roads until they are snow, ice and mud free. It’s also important to remember that large trucks have a difficult time travelling on snow, ice and mud too. They also cause a lot more damage to our roads than smaller trucks and ATVs.

Please fill your Propane tanks before winter weather arrives. If a full tank can’t last through the winter, please buy a bigger tank.

Planning for Winter Weather

Not only should you fill your tanks before winter and buy large tanks to last all winter, but stock up on food and water.

Treacherous roads and power outages can be a problem in winter, so buy plenty of water, canned and dried food. Having plenty of warm clothes, boots, and blankets is also a necessity. It’s also good to have a generator and alternate sources of heat to cook with and heat your homes.

A propane furnace requires electricity to run, so owning a few portable heaters and a stove that can be manually ignited is crucial if the power goes out and you don’t have a generator. It’s also important to have plenty of gasoline and/or propane stored up to run your generator, heater and stove. If you have a wood heat and/or cook stove, make sure to have plenty of dry, seasoned wood.

Living in the mountains has never been easy. Old timers grew big gardens in the summer and would can and dry their harvest to last them through the winter. Very seldom did they leave their mountain homes. They heated their houses and cooked their food on wood stoves and entertained themselves by playing music, telling stories and playing games. Living in the mountains in the winter has become much easier due to modern technology, but it’s important to know how past generations survived so that we too can make it through the winter.

I realize that most full time residents at Amber Ranches already know all of this information, but many homeowners and property owners here do not. If you’re not fully prepared for winter, please do not come up to Amber Ranches in the winter. You just never know when it might snow.

And here are some winter photos…

Spring is Finally Here

Due to Hurricane Helene, our regular maintenance schedule changed a bit. Normally we blow the sticks and leaves off of our roads and out of our ditches and culverts in the late fall. Due to Helene, we weren’t able to do this back then. Instead, we ended up cutting up fallen trees, regrading all of our roads, ditches, and unclogging culverts.

Cleaning up and repairing things from the storm set us back, but we’ve worked hard to get caught up. We got the sticks and leaves up early this spring before the leaves and grass started to grow. Now we are weedeating roadsides and back on track.

Now that warm weather is here, we no longer have to worry about extremely muddy conditions. In fact, due to the longer days of heat and sunshine, dusty roads will be our next road conditions to deal with. We’ll do our best to grade the roads, but keep in mind that the roads need some moisture to be effectively graded.

And here are some spring photos…

A Brief History of Doc’s Place

As some of you already know, my son and I are living at Doc’s Place. Doc’s Place and the Pond House properties are owned by Ashley Herschman and are located next to Amber Ranches. Even though Doc’s Place isn’t a part of Amber Ranches, it was purchased by the original developers of Amber Ranches and sold to Ashley Herschman a few years back. I have been the caretaker of these properties for quite a few years, now I finally live here.

Instead of calling this property “Doc’s Place,” I grew up calling it “Junior’s Place.” Dewey Ingram Jr. “Junior” was a relative of mine and he died in the 2000’s. My Great, Great, Great Granddaddy Charlie Ingram (who once owned the property of the house that my brother now lives in on Broad Branch Road), was also Junior Ingram’s grandpa. That would make Junior and I some kind of distant cousins.

Junior was born in 1926 and is buried behind my brother’s house at the Ingram Cemetery. Junior was a war veteran and married a lady named Helen Des.

Helen was from Germany and was considered a wonderful lady by all accounts. Her family’s background is not very well known but she met Junior when he was stationed in Germany during his military service.

My Grandma was good friends with Helen and said that she was one of the nicest and hardest working women she’d ever known. Grandma said that Helen could never go to a graveyard for any reason whatsoever. While she was imprisoned by the Nazis in Germany, she was made to hand-pull the grass that grew on the graveyards. The sight of a graveyard brought back terrible memories and so she never went to them. I don’t know for sure if Helen was Jewish, but she was a prisoner in a Nazi camp. I wish I knew more about her. I’ll try to do some research. The last name of “Des” isn’t a common Jewish name, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t have Jewish ancestry.

My granddaddy said Junior raised cattle and farmed the property. He grew potatoes up on what they call “Lot 1” of the “Roan High Preserve” section of Amber Ranches. (Lots 1-6 of the “Roan High Preserve” section of Amber Ranches used to be part of Junior’s Place. The developers incorporated this section of the property into Amber Ranches some years back.)

I grew up in the 1990s and don’t remember Junior or Helen. I knew he was a distant cousin of some kind and had a whole bunch of cattle in and around the house that he built and that I now live in.

Even though the “Ball” or “Bald” Road isn’t traveled much today, this old wagon road to the top of the Roan was widely traveled years ago. Junior Ingram kept the road graded and passable enough to haul cattle up and down the mountain in a truck and trailer. My brother and I both remember driving this road on 3-wheeler ATVs with our granddaddy. I remember Junior’s cows, but I don’t remember Junior.

Just before Junior died, his personal medical doctor bought the property off of him. According to many sources, this “Doc” bought the property at a very low price. Some say Junior was taken advantage of. This “Doc” then leased the property out to hunters before finally selling it to the developers of Amber Ranches after just a few years of ownership.

After buying Junior’s place from “Doc” the developers of Amber Ranches then developed the upper section (Lots 1-6) of Junior’s old farm and called it “Roan High Preserve.” The lower part of Junior’s Place where the cabin is was never developed and isn’t part of Amber Ranches.

Before Junior owned the property we now call “Doc’s Place,” this same property was owned by a man named Charlie Honeycutt.

Charlie Honeycutt lived in a cabin across the field from Junior’s cabin. It stood next to the old Wolf River apple tree below the pond. I don’t remember this cabin, but my Granddaddy and Great Uncle Earl Troutman do.

I don’t know when the cabin was torn down, but my Uncle Earl said he remembered Charlie hauling farm supplies up the Ball “Bald Road” to this cabin back when he was a boy. Earl was born in 1934 and so this must have been back in the 1940s. Earl said Charlie Honeycutt was already an old man in the 40s, so he must have been born back in the 1800s.

I wish I knew more about the history of this property, but I’m glad to share what little I know.

Here are some photos of the place…