Ctiger - I have thought about using a tapener, however, my reservation with using one is my monofilament wire - having to cut thousands of pieces of tape from my vines leaves a HUGE area for an "oops" while cutting the tape away from the wires - one little cut, and it would slice right thru my wire - remember - it is plastic, not wire. The bands that I am currently playing with seem to be working pretty good - so I will update once I see how they do over the next year. BradyB - a movie??? Oh my - there would indeed be some moments for certain.... Milehighgirl - I think I am more crazy than anything!!! Actually my grandparents were known many years ago over many counties for their produce - that was their way of living...peaches, greenbeans, corn, watermelons, squash, etc. My mom grew up working in the fields (she hates it by the way - even though she married a farmer!!!)....which leads me to my parents - farmers - and my dad always had a melon wagon at the end of the quarter mile lane with the melons in it...you would drive by, pick one out, drop your money in the box sitting in the wagon and go on your way....very cool, and really, usually the money box did not come up short. So, I guess this madness you could say is in my blood.... Murky - I doubt my labor will be repaid....ever!!!!! I paid my two 13 year old kids their salary for the year of $100 each.....even though they fussed the entire month of the season...they really didnt do a whole lot - but did help me pick around 170 pounds for our local winery which is going to make blackberry wine with our berries (cool huh!!!) As far as expenses - I will break even next year. Mind you, I had all of the end post, t-post, tractor, etc. from prior "adventures" around the farm. My expenses where: plants, monofilament wire, wire stretcher for monofilament, t-post connectors for the monofilament wire, drip-line irrigation, vine clips, different vine clips, more vine clips, weed killer, digital scale, picking buckets, directional u-pick signs, plastic bags for buckets, june bug traps (they were horrible about a month ago, and still have some out there chomping on some fruit/leaves)... the biggest expense was the plants themselves, followed by the monofilament wire and drip-line irrigation - I would buy the 2 year old plants again (almost double the price of one year plants), I would DEFINATELY do the monofilament wire (love it so far) and the definately the drip-line irrigation - little expense, absolute BREEZE for ME to install!!!! On the trellis design - I am not certain I like the 3 wire set-up - reason being is of course - LOTS OF LABOR tying up everything - I am currently talking to one university who is contemplating handling their canes a different way which has my interest - possibly not tying canes but doing a rather "raspberry" type of support as the middle or top wire (a sandwich of two wires) - my only hang-up is what I have encountered over the past few weeks after the storm...canes being blown over to a severe slant - so I would have to think of something to keep them from being able to do that....I do see some sort of revisement in my trellis design, I just haven't came up with what as of yet!!! I just ran out to take a few photos I will see if I can get them uploaded - a few different ones.... The one on this post - is the "beast" in its entirety - 9 rows, 200ft each of Triple Crown blackberries...... June bug leaf damage, size of triple crown canes, a "completed" plant - pruned and ready for winter, one of the "beast" yet to be tamed (i.e. - unpruned, leaning from weather, spent berry greens still on),

The taste issue is probably due to the cartridge filter in the refridgerator. Try changing it. Plastic that is used in the refridgerators will somes leave a flunky taste in water anyway. I like to keep a glass pitcher of tap water in my refridgerator. What they are calling national standards is what the business refers to as MCL (maximum containment level). It is the highest amount that the EPA will allow in potable water. Where there is a dash there is no MCL for that. mg/l is a fancy way of saying parts per million. Chlroine has a minimum also which is 0.2 ppm. EPA Primary standards are anything that affect health such as chlorine, lead, flouride, etc. EPA Secondary standards are mostly taste, color, or otherwise cosmetic issues that are harmless such as manganese This post was edited by jcalhoun on Sun, Oct 27, 13 at 13:03

Susan - I'll try to help. You said you want to keep white wines cool. Any reason? Is it just to chill them before drinking or is it to store them for some time? If the latter, you want to keep your reds just as cool as your whites - in other words don't keep either on top of the fridge for six months or six years. But if it's just to get them to a good drinking temp, put them in the freezer for 15 minutes or so. I do it with both reds and whites if I'm not taking them from my cellar - whites a little bit longer. If you have the wines out on the counter, and you keep the house around 70F or warmer like most Americans, the wines are way too warm. Back in the 1970s, the US standardized on the "fifth" of a gallon which is roughly the 750ml size bottle. There were many different shapes and sizes of bottles in Europe but they wanted to sell in the US so most of them adopted that size. In terms of shape, there is basically the "Bordeaux" bottle and the "Burgundy", or "Rhone" bottle. The first is generally like a cylinder with a neck. It's about 13 inches high. The Rhone shape is gently sloping and much wider at the bottom than the top. You can look them up and you'll understand in a second. The Bordeaux shape is easy to stack and if I ruled the world, ALL wine would come in those bottles, although to be honest, I think the other ones are nicer looking. In any event, the Bordeaux shape is about 3 inches diameter. The Rhone shape is about 3 1/2 inches at the widest point and while you can stack them, the stack isn't nearly as stable and you don't want to stack them too high. When they measure the capacity of wine coolers, they measure by the Bordeaux shaped bottle. At the bottom of a bottle is an indentation, called a punt, and you can put the neck of one bottle into the punt of another so they take up less space. If your fridge is stacked to the max with those bottles, that's the capacity of your fridge. It's complete BS. Most people have some Rhone shapes and some Bordeaux shapes. You can also put them neck to neck, but the extra 1/2 inch on the Rhone shapes will reduce your capacity, both standing and laying down. And then you have all the other shapes. Maybe 80 percent of all bottles come in the shapes I described, but then you have the odd shapes and sizes. In Tokaj, they use a 500 ml bottle. In Germany they have long, skinny bottles. In Italy, they're all over the place - some producers use the French bottle shapes described, others have long (meaning longer that 13 inches) or odd shapes. Even square shapes. And some producers, in the US and in Europe, use super heavy and huge bottles. In CA for example, Turley uses a bottle that's an extreme version of the Rhone shape. It's much fatter at the bottom, made of heavier glass, and it's more dramatically sloped. There are some Beaujolais producers who do the same. So that's what people are talking about. If you buy a fridge that says it holds 250 bottles, that means fully packed with standard Bordeaux bottles. Even in Bordeaux, Haut Brion has a slightly different shape to their bottle. If the shapes are in any way different, you won't get that 250 bottle capacity. I get about 200 in my cooler, which is why I finally just built a cellar that holds a lot more w/out worrying about the shape. Now all that said, if you aren't keeping bottles to age for 20 or more years, and if you're going to drink w/in like a year, you really don't need to worry all that much. Just stick them in the freezer for a bit before opening. If you're planning to keep a bottle for a few years, it's worth keeping it cool. Don't worry so much about vibration and light and humidity - temperature is the main concern. Spoilage yeast and other things happen as the wine heads into the mid to high 60s, so either drink fast or store in cool conditions. And BTW - your fridge is just fine, despite what some people claim. Good luck.

Ok so here is the lowdown on the insurance. We do not have any special policy, just regular homeowners insurance. Originally my husband called our insurance agent and he was told that insurance would cover replacing a similar cabinet to the one that fell off the wall, but would not replace all of them. He suggested doing a different cabinet finish as an accent cabinet. I did NOT want that at all and was bummed out for a few weeks! Then we decided to call our insurance company directly. They sent out an adjuster to see the damage. The guy was great-- he said that because the cabinets were discontinued we would have to replace all the cabinets. He mentioned that he had to submit the claim as a cabinet "collapse", not a brown/cracked cabinet. Not sure what the difference is in the insurance world, but he said it had to be written up as a collapse. He took lots of pictures and also wanted me to email him the pics I took the day it happened with the broken glass all over floor and the broken cabinet outside on our lawn. He also said formica would be replaced because there was a knick in it. I was trying to hold back my smile when he said that! Then i almost keeled over when he noticed 2 small gouges with exposed wood in the hardwood floor on the table side of the peninsula. He said if water got in there it could start to rot the wood. Because we have a continuous open floor plan they will pay for the kitchen, dining room, hallway and computer/study room to be refinished. Said we couldn't do just the kitchen area because there would be a noticeable change and would take away from value of our home. Now I get all new hardwoods too! YAY!! He said he was going to submit his proposal to the insurance company and we would hear back from him in a week or so. It took over 2 weeks so i didn't think that was a good sign. Then we got the call that it was approved!!!! I had to look over the figures and sign off on them before the check was issued. Basically, they gave us $15,500 for the initial check. Arbella Insurance does what they call a "depreciation holdback" to ensure that all the work is done. After all work is completed, I have to submit receipts to get a recoverable depreciation value, not to exceed $2,100.00 I also received a check for $625 for personal property damage- plates, bowls, serving platters, stoneware that were broken the day the cabinet collapsed. So grand total from insurance will be $18,225.00 after I submit the receipts to prove work was done to get the depreciation holdback check for $2,100. We did not do any of the work ourselves and still managed to only go $300 over the budget. :)