Focus! Keep your focus. Doesn't mean no variety, but decide on an image, and everything connects to that image. Who is your target market? What overall is your product? From what you've said: 1. A rental store. If you do this, you rent everything from shovels to bobcats. For large items, have a $20 delivery fee/pickup fee. To do this you need someone on site that can repair almost everything. Ball park figure is that something rents for 1% of it's cost per day. Your market is the acreage owner who needs a wood splitter for 3 days every fall, and a chipper for a weekend in the spring. And the home handyman with a fixer-upper. 2. A craft store. Your own, and your neighbors crafts. Figure out what a shelf has to make per month. That becomes the basis for rent. Unless you want to go crazy you either have to have some bar code system so that you can later tell Michelle that 42 jars of the crabapple-blueberry jelly sold, but none of the Green tomato mincemeat. OR you have to buy the stuff from them wholesale, and resell it. The latter is simpler, more profitable, but higher risk. 3. Coffee spot. Baked goods. This one combines well with a craft store, not so much with a rental store. 4. Hardware store. Bulk hardware. (Our UFA store sells a lot of hardware by the pound. E.g. Any size nail is 60 cents a pound. All nuts and bolts and washers are 2.35 a pound. All deck screws ... ) If you do hardware you should carry a full line of fencing stuff too. We have a category of stores that for lack of a better term I'll call farm stores. UFA, Co-op, Peavey Mart. They are far larger than 2600 square feet. Probably 15,000-25000 square feet plus a yard. Combine a lumber store, ag chemical store, hardware store (but limited) They will sell curry combs, but not saddles. Ear tags and milk supplement. Chicken grit. Can buy pipe and a sink, but not a fancy sink. Can buy paint, but only in fixed colours. Red and white are available in 5 gallon buckets. Can buy motor oil, but not oil filters. Can buy calf sleds. 5. If you go with trailer rental, you need an acre outside the place to store them. True for lots of big item rental. If you want it to be a store that people enjoy you need a product that they come in for over and over. This implies some form of consumable item. -- food, nails. When you open a retail store, you are on a leash. You have to keep the same hours that your neighbors do. Our small town runs 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. 6 days a week, except Thursday and Friday they are open until 9 p.m. Only coffee spots are open on Sunday. Exceptions: The rental store is open at 7 a.m. so that the foreman can pick up that generator on the way to the job site. You or someone you trust have to be there every moment of that day. Story time: This year I did test marketing for Cut your own Christmas Tree. I had a small mention on my web site, and a small unpaid ad on PickYourOwn.org. I got 50 contacts, and sold a dozen trees over 3 weekends. One weekend was bitter cold (-30) and all 8 people cancelled.) We did it by appointment. That way we'd know when to expect people. One of us was in the hosue to answer the phone from half an hour before to half an hour after their appointment time when they got lost. (No such thing as fool proof directions... Fools are too clever.) I work out of my house. Even so, my weekends were circumscribed by the need to be around. It's hard to do much else when running a retail business. You can do other things, but your attention is always split. Will I do it again? Yes. The market is there. Based on my very limited advertising, I think I can ramp up to 40-60 trees per weekend for the month prior to Christmas. At that level, I can handle the entire operation with my better half at home with the phone, and myself in the field with the trees. If I hired high school kids in elf hats, I could go bigger than that, but I'm not sure I want to.

Jo, I have seen linearis in the box stores in the past few years, though usually by the time I came across them, they were looking pretty sad. I got my EA linearis from a local garden center that sold EA plants, I gave the girl there that did the ordering a list of a few plants I was interested in, and she passed them along to EA, no promises though! Lucky for me, they did send a linearis, and I knew what day they were to be shipped and was there to see them take it out of the box, so I was the only one to ever water it or care for it, which may be why the plant survived. FYI, alot of people water linearis from the bottom to avoid what seems to be a common issue with the variety, stem rot right above the soil level. Not the whole stem, but just a small section rots and then dries up and withers away, so that water and nutrients can no longer reach the rest of the stem...if you don't clip it off and remove the dead part, it will die. I have watched it happen to my plant, and am slowly transferring all the pieces that get the stem rot to hydroculture. I tried switching out of the EA mix to my faster draining mix, and that helped somewhat, but didn't solve the problem. I am not having any problems in hydro though, so I am assuming it has something to do with the soil, rot causing microbes or whatever. I have heard of this happening to a few other people with this plant, but i don't know how common it is - and I am a stingy waterer too, so I was surprised it happened to me. If anyone else has had the problem, I would love to know how they solved it. No matter what, it is not enough to make me want to stop growing this hoya, I really like it. Wish the dang thing would bloom though!!

Colleen I was just thinking about that recipe, and it's true that you don't taste the anchovies at all. They just heighten the flavour. Here it is: (Poached meatballs in lemon & caper sauce.) Here is a German dish which originated in Königsberg, former capital of eastern Prussia, now part of Russia and called Kaliningrad. Having a pleasant, mild flavour, these meatballs are also a low calorie dish as they are cooked in water. They're well known in most German households and are often a family favourite. Ingredients: 1/2 lb finely ground veal (225 grams) 1/2 lb finely ground lean pork (225 grams) 1 large onion - peeled and finely chopped 8 finely chopped + 2 finely chopped later for sauce (total 50 grams) 2 TBS capers finely chopped + 1 TBS whole capers later for the sauce 1 lg egg, beaten 3 slices firm crusts removed, soaked in water juice of 1/2 lemon - or juice of whole lemon if it is very small 2 bay leaves 2 whole cloves (aromatic spice cloves) 1/2 TBS oil for frying onion 2 TBS flour mixed with water salt & freshly ground pepper 1. Sauté onion gently until golden and put aside. 2. Mix the two ground meats with 8 of the chopped anchovies, 2 TBS chopped capers, beaten egg and the soaked bread which has been squeezed dry. Then mix in the cooled fried onion and some salt and pepper. 3. In a wide saucepan put 3 3/4 cups of water and add some salt, the lemon juice, bay leaves and cloves. Bring to the boil. 4. Meanwhile form large meatballs with hands and place on a plate - about 14 meatballs. If water boils, turn off until all meatballs are formed. 5. and bring it slowly back to the boil then lower heat and let simmer gently for 30 minutes. Turn meatballs once or twice during this time. 6. When cooked, remove meatballs with slotted spoon to a casserole and keep warm. Mix flour and cold water to a paste and add to the cooking water, stirring to thicken. Add the last two anchovies, chopped fine and 1 TBS whole capers. Bring to the boil and simmer 2 - 3 minutes. 7. Pour and serve with boiled potatoes and green beans. I actually had more sauce than what appears here in the photo. I kept the rest in the pot on the stove for keeping hot. Note: They turned out very well. My lemon was VERY juice and I used all the juice which was a bit too much. Go easy on the lemon juice if it is a large lemon. SharonCb

Did you find a solution to this problem? I have the same issue with my white pearl pebble tec spa. I refilled it with well water and the whole spa is stained gold. The pool stain treat pad worked to spot clean it, so my pool store suggested adding a pool stain treat product to the water. It has helped, but the stain is still there. I am at the point where I just want to drain the spa and acid wash it. BTW, I learned the hard way that my outdoor hose bibs run untreated well water. I am now topping off my pool and spa by running a hose to a tap in the house, so that I am using water that has been processed by our water treatment system.