I'm doing our seed orders and crop planning for this year and wanted to update my thread. Last year's plowed and tilled area is about 35x90. We did plasticulture and had a few other raised beds right around the greenhouse. The market was pretty tiny and really only worth it for selling starts, but I've done a lot of networking and let people in the community know we're farming, so I'm going to try a twist on the CSA model: Since we don't need money up front for start up costs, instead of a traditional CSA (which excludes most of the nearby residents who can't come up with $200-400 upfront) I'm going to set up online ordering so that folks on my Facebook page and mailing list can pre-order a box for pickup at the Saturday market on the square. The ecommerce software does inventory management, so I can allow folks to choose what they want in their order and if it's not available, it won't display. I have about 10-15 people interested (not enough for a CSA, really, which makes it perfect for this experiment) and have sent them a survey asking them what their highest priority veggies and herbs are (what they use the most). For us, our favourite garden produce ended up being potatoes, corn, beans, broccoli, swiss chard, onions and watermelon. We grew all kinds of stuff, but including any of those items in our meals made it feel as convenient as fast food. The potatoes especially - I know they're cheap to buy, but pulling a handful out of the garden to make french fries to go with a BLT on homemade bread and with homemade mayo from our own eggs was AMAZING. Deeply satisfying. We grew too many tomatoes but we knew that going in (partner was having cabin-fever issues in February and sowed about 400 tomato seeds. Every single packet I'd bought for the past three years. Our germination rates were TOO GOOD, BAKER CREEK! :)) We raised 4 pigs last year and sold 2 of them, and plan to do 4-8 this year. It was extremely easy to find buyers for the pork! We sourced non-GMO feed and had no idea how to price it, so we basically charged just above cost and naturally we sold out right quick. I've since figured out more appropriate pricing based on nearby producers. The pigs did really well on beets, other garden produce, and tons of apples from our old apple trees. Grass was their absolute favourite (and free!) so we are investing in electric fencing and additional hog panels to make movable pens for the pasture. Last year they were in two stationary pens of about 50'x100' (2 pigs per pen) and so we have nice fertilized and pig-tilled areas to expand this year's garden. There was only about 3-4 weeks that grain made up the bulk of their diet - for most of their lives, they ate grass and vegetables and apples. And occasionally eggs. Our eggs are popular and I didn't even start enough hens to be selling eggs - we have about 10-15 people interested in weekly eggs and we are producing only about 3 dozen a week, so I'll be expanding the flock this year. I only went to market for the first six weeks of the season; this year I will be able to attend more regularly. I was careful about writing down feedback from the customers - everyone was extremely pleased with the quality of our starts, three or four people were looking for Sungold tomatoes or yellow pear tomatoes, and a few folks were really excited that we offered tomatilloes (I'm from California and wanted to make salsa verde!). Our patron, my father-in-law, wants okra and asparagus this year (we have six or seven mature asparagus plants, but I just set aside an area for a permanent 100' bed) and five or six peaches. So I'm drawing maps and calculating costs and occasionally visiting Planter's in KC for instant-gratification bulk seed orders and seed starting supplies. Lastly, we purchased remnant plastic from A.M. Leonard for our hoop house and I could not be happier with the quality or the service! The price was awesome too - our 12'x20' experimental greenhouse ended up costing about $250 in salvaged

Boxo, one cane wonder or not, that Oklahoma would set the stage for the Biggest and Best Rogers & Hammerstein, lol! What a grand showing, and of course it Tops the bouquet! Whoo-hoooo, whoo-hoooooooooo! Oh, dear! I forgot to mention the blazin' amazin' Blaze of Glory. As for AD, I'm embarrassed. From the view/angle I thought hmmm is that AD or is it Sunset Celebration...hmmm. I shudda ate my parents' hemp seeds first and blamed it on that, hahaha! I'm actually writing from my parents' house. My mom bought a bag of hemp seeds from the Wild Oats Market and it is DELICIOUS! lol! So between imaginary tequila lounging at Boxo's Garden and hemp seeds I am STOKED, haha! The hemp seeds are shaped and taste similar to sesame seeds but they are actually more tasty because they are meatier and have a very sweet cashew taste to them...They go delicious with the Costco crab cakes, lol! and Japanese rice. When I make my own gourmet crab cakes I will definitely use have to get a bag of those hemp seeds. Cheers and will talk soon! Whoo-hooooo! Whoo-hoooo! Oh, forgot, you must give me a botanical lesson on how to tell Phlox's apart from Hydrangea. You grow both, and I embarrassed myself again with my Dad. He said I know my plants! That is a Hydrangea, when I said uhhhh, isn't that a Phlox? hee-hee! I am not! on my game tonight, lol!

This dishwasher, which someone on CL nearby was selling, was branded American Kitchens, a cabinet and faucet manufacturer that was worried when home appliances became popular that dishwashers and other gear would take space and profits from their cabinet, sink, and faucet lines. (GE also was in the cabinet business around this time). The front door of this dishwasher matched the look of their cabinetry, kind of like new dishwashers that accept cabinet panels, except that the cabinet panel was already included (and wasn't flat - the top drawer jutted out considerably) AK knew nothing of how to make dishwashers though, so the design was contracted out to a company called D&M (Design & Manufacturing) which also made dishwashers for other companies like Caloric that only made cooking appliances or refrigerators and suddenly needed a dishwasher in their lineup when they became popular, and wound up selling their wares under numerous brands. The top rack is ingenious - it's round, and the plates and glasses as usual leaned against the tines. This allowed you to rotate the rack as you were loading or unloading it so you wouldn't have to lean over an reach across to the other side (I have chronic back pain and notice these things). What's more, the water splashed around by the impeller hit the leaning plates in the rack and caused it to slowly rotate by itself as the machine was running, ensuring that everything on the top rack got equally clean. D&M was still around well into the '80s at least, but industry consolidation meant that after that most appliance companies by then had their own in-house dishwasher manufacturing and didn't need D&M anymore. Here's a Youtube vid of this machine in operation (skip to 4:15) or so. http://youtu.be/7y7pNltKkwg

Great update - last Tuesday we were out looking at more houses even as far away as an hour from my office and 30 minutes from DH's (and that's one main reason we want to move is tso get closer to his office) and on a whim we called the builder we've spoken to and he agreed to meet us at a piece of land we had looked at before. The land was OK when we looked at it before but didn't 'speak' to either of us UNTIL.... I was standing on the top of the small dirt road which the property dead ends into and talking to my daughter. We both turned at the same time to look across the street from the land and we realized it has an incredible view, you can see for miles and miles and as the sun was setting behind us everything was sparkling and gold and I got chills and my daughter got tears in her eyes and we KNEW this was it. My DH came out from walking the land and he said this was what he wanted to do even before we told him about our experience. I honestly believe in those gut instincts that tell you when something is right and this was more than RIGHT. I'm sure others had looked at the property and not realized it's potential just as we had but that afternoon I will never forget. The builder said it's a great piece of land, too. I'll share a similar story since I'm in the mood - when my mom moved to Maine about 25 years ago, she had divorced my dad, remarried, went to college at age 50 and moved thousands of miles away. She wasn't sure she'd done the right thing until she went to see her current lake cottage. As she was leaving the drive with the realtor a puff of wind blew the snow from the roof and it sparkled and blew past her and she said it was that moment she knew it was the right thing to do. So... we are now finalzing the contract for the land and have visited again with the builder and I'll have the start of house plans (will be asking for lots of help on here :) starting tomorrow. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your thoughts. I know some of you think we should have taken the house but it had so many obsticles and the fact that my son who is only 8 would not be able to play on the road due to the fast and high volume of traffic whizzing past at 60 mph plus several acres of bottom land which would be unusable I know this is the right thing to do. It might have been different if we were in a larger city but we're looking in a very rural area and there just isn't much to choose from. So.... I'm excited and nervous but feeling more positive about this than I have in a long time. Thanks again, Sunny