Leah canned 34 quarts and 26 pints from a single row of beets in one 12-hour marathon. She's been canning pickles (cucumbers) and green beans. She canned 49 pints of carrots a and our last batch of sour kraut. We've been giving most of the yellow squash, zucchini, and tomatoes away. I quit picking green beans and hope to allow the rest to dry. Too much work with all the rest of the stuff I have happening.

Potatoes and the rest of the beets need harvesting now. Blackeyed peas are forming--in a week or so that fresh hell begins...

Peppers, more cucumbers, more tomatoes, more squash...

Most people's nightmares consist of ghosts and goblins. Mine come in the form of endless rows of unpicked produce.

I did inhale.

You got any downtime? This weekend I too felt close to the earth, not to mention strong and ready to take on anyone. I shoveled about 25 wheel barrels full of top soil into my garden. I can't wait to pick my herbs, green peppers and tomatoes and gaze at my flowers in bloom. It's time to listen to Vivaldi's four seasons. Here's summer played by violin virtuoso Nigel Kennedy. BTW, what kind of seasons are there in Texas?

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

The American Energy Crisis Blog

...

Get out a piece of paper. Draw an X and Y graph. Plot the benefit of 13 million barrels of imported oil per day for 2007. Plot the impact of little to NO IMPORTS IN 2020. Now draw line between the 2 points. (Come on, there was a reason you did this stuff in high school, right?) Now draw vertical lines up from the horizon to plot the impact on any given year on the time line. Take a good guess when the defaults start to pile up... and it ain't 2020.

Still thinking about housing, auto, and/or retail stocks now? Yea? Call me! Have I got a deal (and a bridge) for you!

I did inhale.

In Canada we are having signs cropping up almost everywhere in support of farmers.
"Farmers feed cities"
How true!
The people in the cities have to realize this to understand the economy.
The stock market doesn't feed cities. Farmers do!
Plant all the stocks in the ground you want and it wont help.
You need farmers and their expertize. They need your support!
If your stocks grow, good for you. If farmers can't grow, you starve.
Starve farmers and you starve yourselves.
Look at the basic argument.
Remove all people who are controlling all things legal. Where would we be?
We would have to learn how to be honest.
Let us look at my trade.
Remove all people who control heating, air conditioning and refrigeration. Where would we be?
You answer this one.
There are many other trades that are just as important (or more so than mine).
Remove all people who grow food. Where would we be?
We would all die from starvation.
THINK ABOUT IT!

_{repressive governments mix administrative clumsiness & inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.}

Stop eating bread, cakes, cookies and any wheat product. Move to rice.

Coeliac disease is caused by a reaction to gliadin, a gluten protein found in wheat (and similar proteins of the tribe Triticeae which includes other cultivars such as barley and rye). Upon exposure to gliadin, the enzyme tissue transglutaminase modifies the protein, and the immune system cross-reacts with the bowel tissue, causing an inflammatory reaction. That leads to flattening of the lining of the small intestine, which interferes with the absorption of nutrients. The only effective treatment is a lifelong gluten-free diet.

To boldly grow where no man has grown before

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

and believe you have a disease that makes you gluten intolerant. Eat potatoes instead and use potato-based flours. Bananas are good too because they contain no gluten. Don, do try a diet without gluten and see if your condition improves.

I don't plant on your scale, but it isn't any cheaper to grow your own--in fact growing my own vegetables and fruit may cost more. But I don't grow from an economic point-of-view--it's because home-grown produce has more vitamins, is tastier, gives me an appreciation of the hardships growers encounter, and it's just plain 'fun' and exciting to watch stuff grow. Canning--the expense of buying bottles, new lids, and the rest of the equipment, time and trouble to do it, doesn't pay either. Like yourselves, I don't can because it's cheaper and give a fair amount away to relatives and friends. It's a special feeling to share what one grows with others and far exceeds canning costs.