I don't know if you are looking for meat bird farming or egg farming info, but I have some history about egg farming. My mom used to work in a commercial egg farm when I was pretty young. Since as you can imagine egg pickers didn't make much in the way of a salary, my brother and I would spend quite a few days at work with her during the summer when she couldn't afford a sitter. I'll tell you, there are not many jobs worse than that of a commercial egg farmer during the 70's. The hens were kept in very small wire cages so that they could only sit to lay or stand to eat. The eggs rolled out on a tray and the picker would come along once a day and gather up the eggs. Soem of the buildings had motorized carts, but most of them were push carts. Part the of job was to pull out the dead hens and put them on the bottom of the cart. We ended up with more than one partially crippled hen at home that my mom rescued from the egg tray-hens would try of crawl out of the gap and get stuck. After a day (or 2) stuck in the egg gap they were not able to stand or set any longer. The manager would kill these hens when he found them-my mom would bring them home to add to our small flock. (along with the occasional orphanded hen house feral kitten). I don't know if this is of any help but it was interesting to remember and make me feel so much more appreciative of my own job :) Cheers, Terry

Hi Looks like mine messages had some writing errors, but i think you got still what i wrote. It took time because i had to watch the title what was in there to tell what was in it. Gonebananas hi You welcome. I have found the book you mentioned, but it cost more. Scottfsmith hi How much you learn information about peaches from this book depends how much you know about peaches. If you know a lot of peaches you probably don't learn so much new things by reading of peach book.

You still have a full month in central-NC before common "last frost". A lot of summer crop stuff won't take off growing until late-April/early-May anyway. Pretty much every summer crop is fair game in our area. During July/August tom/pepper production may slow down, but come Sept/Oct plants are flush with flowers and fruits. The only "summer" crop I've seen suffer a bit are common string beans which sometimes stop producing mid-summer if we have extended extremely high heat and they're in full sun.

To recapitulate what I was writing: I thank you all for your comments, all of which reflect much thought and feeling; Rick, I particularly appreciate the warmth of what you wrote and your information about legal protections of intellectual property; Cynthia, thanks for the observations on books and preservation of the written word, an interesting topic; catsrose, thanks for a realistic survey of the obstacles involved; and, really, THANKS to you all for the encouragement, literary quotes (Odinthor), book mentions, factual information, discussions about the value of illustrations in books, and everything else that you all have put in your answers. Concerning myself and my book project, I came up a few days ago with a provisional answer to the question I asked in the title of this thread. There's nothing in the way of my starting to write--unless it's my own fear or sloth. I don't know whether I have the discipline it takes to write a book; I don't know whether I'm a good enough writer to write a good book. I do have one quality needed to tackle this task, and that's a healthily stubborn faith in my own ideas about gardening and writing. Many of you make the point that such a book as I'm talking about needs to come from passion, and you're absolutely right. I already have a lot of practice working long and hard on a task for purely personal satisfaction, as opposed to applause or money: it's called my garden. Should I write a book, then if some people like it, and if I even make a bit of money from it, that will be great. But that's not why I'm thinking about such a project, and these considerations wouldn't be enough to make me undertake it. So, all I need to do now is sit down at the computer and begin writing..... Melissa