7000ft, I am totally convinced you ought to write a book. Your family sounds very interesting and it sounds like you all work as a cooperative of sorts. How much of your food do you produce? The tomatoes that I grow are primarily for sauce, so I use Roma-type tomatoes. They are odd-looking, being long and quite large. The variety I grew this year was Super San Marzano. I've tried some others, but this one is the best. The sauce-type tomatoes are awesome for making sauce. They are very meaty with minimal juice and seeds. Making sauce is a breeze because you can skip the steps for squeezing the juice and seeds out. According to the catalogs, some varieties have pectin in them that helps to thicken the sauce. We ended up with 25 jars of sauce in the freezer. That is a record for us, so we are pleased! That's 25 dinners during ski season that I don't have to cook. :) I also grow a cherry tomato and some sandwich-type tomatoes. I've had good luck with Early Wonder, which is early yet tasty. (way better than early girl!) Inside the GH we enjoy our first tomatoes in mid-July. Without the GH we are lucky to get any red tomatoes at all. I'm sure it's the same for you. My gardening efforts are pretty much solo, but my husband was instrumental in building the GH and in helping look after things as needed. He is an expert at raising seedlings because I tend to travel a lot in the spring. He also built a root cellar and he is fully on board with our quest to grow as much food as possible. It's a bit of an oddball pursuit, so I'm happy that he's into it!

Karen Marie: I prune mine right after harvest. But that may not work for everything. Some bloom and fruit year around. So I'd just cut off the long limbs that are out of bounds. Try to prune to a lateral heading in the best direction. If there are places too thick, thin those out. Take out crossing or dead branches. Whatever you do will be better than nothing. They'll grow back even if what you do is wrong. The Fruitnut

Everyone I know who goes to farmers markets expects to pay more than in the store. This is because our produce isn't shipped half way across creation from California or Florida or Mexico, sprayed with various chemicals and then displayed with listless flavor on shelves and refrigerated bins for who knows how long. And the hobby farmers don't last. Once they get rid of their stuff or get tired of slow days (there will be a few) their commitment isn't generally the same as those of us who produce for a llving, as a way of life and/or to supplement our incomes. I am at farmers markets in the inner-city, catering to a lot of low-income people and even they expect to pay more. One reason too, in the inner-city, the few-and-far-between grocery stores often charge premium prices for all of their stuff and a lot of it has a tendency to be lower quality than grocers in more affluent areas of town. That's just the way it is. Anyway, I seldom have anyone complain about price. They are elated that we are selling our produce in their neighborhood. I also LIVE in the neighborhood in an old ethnic Eastern-European neighborhood and we have a mix of all kinds of people. My farm is about 15 miles to the west where I hope to build a house some day. All I know is we don't try to gouge anyone or do the lah-dee-dah type of marketing. But, we do expect to be paid for our labor of love. And I believe most people can appreciate that. The ones that don't? Well, they go to Walmart Supercenters and discount grocery stores and they get exactly what they pay for. Sometimes it's great...I love Aldi's 89 cent pineapples and sometimes it's not so great...Everyone have a safe and happy Memorial Day Holiday!

Hi John, Right off the top of my head, I thought peppers. Peppers cross fairly readily in close distances so isolating a variety in the greenhouse would well. Plus peppers grow well in pots. You could also do eggplant. I'm drawing a blank on anything else right now(long day at work!) Most of the other veggies I grow get large and do best in the ground. Maybe someone else will have a suggestion. Remy