I don't know about forming a club, per se, but wouldn't mind getting together to meet sometime. I've been a member of the National Home Gardening Club for a long time and those of us in SC who use their bulletin board online try to meet at Park Seed in Greenwood in late June when they have the Festival of Flowers. We didn't meet last year because it was 100F that weekend. But we communicate online year round. There are 3 or 4 of us. Used to be 8 or 10. I'm not big into trading plants or saving seeds, but I don't mind sharing the end product if I have extra. Mostly veggies right now. Branching out into fruit trees. Will be a while before they start producing. I've got 8 acres, and a good bit of that is in fruit trees and/or veggie garden plots. I think around 100 fruit trees now and about 1/2 acre in veggie garden. I try to grow unusual veggies for a home gardener that you can't get at the grocery store or produce stand, but I do like the standards as well. I get 200 sweetpotato slips every year to plant and end up with closer to 300. I like yellow squash and zucchini. I've tried patty pan squash, but I don't care for them, so I'll not be doing them again. Green beans a couple times a year. Corn was spectacular last year, so I've expanded a plot so I can double what I had last summer. I have greens growing right now - collards, kale, rutabagas, turnips. I don't like them to get big like you find in late December. Mine are about as big as my hand spread out right now, so a little bigger and they'll be perfect. I'm trying to get back into canning. I used to can a lot in Salem, but I moved and lived in a cracker box for a while and didn't have room. Now I built a bigger house and use the cracker box as the summer kitchen and there's plenty of room to can out there and store things. The last year has been about jams and jellies and pickled things. Lots of peach and blueberry things last summer. Hopefully lots of veggies and cucumber pickles next summer. Chow chow in the fall. etc. Folks at work love fresh veggies and I bring things in to sell cheap. There is no profit overall, though individually, crop by crop, there are some obvious profits. 50 cents per pound for tomatoes and squash because they're easier to pick. $1 per pound for okra. $2 per pound for snow peas. $1 per grocery bag of greens. etc. There is another person at the office that also brings in veggies and we kind of work together to set prices so we don't disagree when we bring in different things on different days. Plus we trade things between ourselves as well as we have things that the other one wants. She has chickens, so lots of fresh eggs. I'm not crazy about them, but I won't turn them down. She has duck eggs occasionally. I really don't care for those, but they're not terrible. I've been collecting (I guess you could say) tractors since 1998 to help with my gardening/farming efforts. Ford Jubilee NAA was the first, and it doesn't run any more. Then came a Massey Ferguson Model 65 (1960, I was told it was 55 HP, but think it's really 45 HP) that works great to till and bush hog. Then came a 2005 Kubota B7500 (26 HP diesel) with a belly mower that I bought used. It's awesome. Last summer, I bought two used John Deere 870's (28HP) - one with turf tires and a belly mower, one with ag tires, both with hard canopies. I use the one with ag tires to do the cultivation of row crops and other utility tasks like scraping the driveway. I had been saving a while for a new mid size and found these on Craig's List and couldn't resist. Plus, I have a Craftsman 26HP GS6500(?) that I bought from someone with the sleeve hitch on the rear for plows and things. It's neat for pulling a 4x8 wagon around and mowing grass, but it doesn't run right now either. Tires are flat, won't crank. Just sad. :-) All in all, it's too much, but I like to have fun and also to have the right tool for the job, and I think I have them now. If I only understood more about engines and things, I'd be better off. That's why I have a real job at Clemson to support my hobby at home. :-) This post was edited by chrisb_sc_z7 on Tue, Dec 4, 12 at 8:57

Hi Kim, I'm glad you liked the maple syrup. I was thinking it might be a bit unusual down your way. I'm going to take a stab at the trivia(I did not google) and say that it is a yes. Though I think I remember a story about tomatoes and someone eating one in the early 1800's to prove he would not die. Speaking of tomatoes. A very odd thing happened to me other other day. I sent Maryanne a link to the story(on an unmentionable site), but maybe you all would enjoy it too. I got home from work this evening, and I went to sit down to eat and see that tomato seeds from Yugoslavia(can't remember which new part) are on the table. A gentleman originally from there that works with my husband went back for a visit. My husband asked him to bring back tomatoes for me in the store pkgs. from there. So I got 3 packs of St. Pierre, a French tomato?(if you about this tomato, please give me some info,) in the original pkgs. from there. Ok, that is not that weird. Hold on it does get wierder. Now I have just picked up these pkgs., and I'm examining the foreign words, and the door bell rings. My husband answers and then he is yelling for me, and I'm annoyed because I just want to look and eat! There is a guy at the door wanting to know where we purchased our new apple tree and how much did it cost.(Our old one died in the local freak October snow storm.) It is grafted with a few antique varieties. My husband doesn't remember the mail order company. I tell him and then he is asking if I have a catalog, so I get up and go look for one, and I finally got to the door. There are actually 2 men, one about 40, one about 70. The younger man is apologizing for the older man who can't speak much English. The older man is pointing at the apple pictures saying with a thick accent, "Yes, yes." as if to say that he does want a tree like mine. He must of made the younger guy stop. My husband say to the younger man, "Where is he from? Yugoslavia?" To which the older man says one of the new parts of Yugoslavia. Then I say, "I just got tomato seed from there!" The older man says, "tomatoes?". Then the young man says, "Don't get him started on tomatoes." I went back in the house and got a pack of the St. Pierres, and hand it to the older man. He smiled and said the word Paradajz(tomato?) from the pkg. The younger guy says the older man has a huge vegetable garden. I then point telling the older man I have a garden in the back. He looked like a happy little kid, and just starts heading back! So we took a garden tour. We came back out front and the younger man thanked us and told the older man to give the seed pkg. back to me. I told him no, to keep it. Then they left. When we got back inside, my husband looks at me and says, "How weird was that? What are the chance of that happening?" Have a good night everyone, Remy

Margo-Congratulations on your first grandchild -soon-to-be. So sad to hear about your bird....I love when they can talk to you that is so cool. We get so attached to our pets and it is hard when we lose them. Hugs coming your way. Thanks for all the happy anniversaries...I remember when Eddie asked me to marry him and I said no way. I hate needles and told him no blood tests for me. He said he knew we could go to SC and not have to get blood tests so that is what we did. Jeanne-lets pray the treatments get scheduled soon. Keep us updated. Glad you received the daylily and hope you see tons of blooms. WE have had so much rain it is unreal. I don't know if my bearded irises can withstand all this rain, they are bad to get bacterial soft-rot with too much rain. Sue G - I received the daylilies and will ship out your Freda James Daylily Monday. Thanks A Halloween anniversary sounds interesting. Eddie always says everyone celebrates our anniversary with all the fireworks. Shirley

Gale. Please email me so I will have your email addy and can send your box out next week Hopefully it will go out next week........ little update My husband and I married in 93. his mom passed in 97 from diabetes complications after being severely sick for about a yr. I take his dad to dr appointments and other things that he needs done. Last may he had heart problems - his ejection fraction was less than 10% - i am amazed his heart was still going at all. ( i started nursing classes in 1996 but quit but remember most all i had learned). To put it plainly - if his heart had stopped he would have been dead before he hit the ground and would have been to late by the time EMTs could get to him with defib machine. We had a defibrillator implanted with pacemaker capabilities. I stay at the hospital when pop is in there. I go over whoevers head i need to for special clearance to stay in ICU or PICU . After that he got bloodclots in his leg and 3 in his lungs. NOW Saturday night his defib started shocking him. My sister in law ( his oldest sons wife) came to get me telling me what happened. It kept shocking him all the way to the ER. We caught the ambulance so when they opened the back doors to get him out I was standing waiting. He was yelling and jerking due to it still shocking him. He said there you are. I said yes pop i am here. We get him in and hooked up to EKG. They have to monitor it to see whats wrong BEFORE they can put the magnet on to stop the shocking. Then they put the magnet on to stop but it is still shocking. They had it in wrong place. So then we wait on the Defib Tech to come from Asheville NC to Spartanburg SC. (Spartanburg has a heart center). He ran tests and stopped the shocking. It was reading his heart beat double. so when his pulse was 80 - it was reading it as 160 nad thought he was having a heartattack. Got to go home. I stayed at his house sat and sun night. we went to his cardiologist today, He is going for more surgery tomorrow afternoon. We do not know anything yet other than they are going to replace one of the leads.