Very interesting tradition of the Amish wedding dress. My great-grandmother was a Seminole and they had different tradition. If you look at the woman on the left in the photo I've linked you'll see that she wears a large collection of bead necklaces. Upon birth a Seminole female would receive a bead necklace, and over the years she'd add more necklaces. At middle age she would start removing them one by one until at her death she would be left with the original necklace she received at her birth. Seminoles also had their own version of the birthing room. If a death occurred in the confines of their village the would abandon the village and find a new spot to set up camp. Infant mortality was quite high in those times and in order to keep from moving constantly they would set up a small shelter just outside the boundaries of the village as a birthing shelter. Here is a link that might be useful: Seminole Women boiling cane sugar

This was the first and only year I have ever planted watermelon. I must say based on or own opinion and many people who are avid gardeners that the M&S we have been enjoying for 3-4 weeks have been delicious and very well formed. I do remember it seemed they took a cpl weeks after we planted for them to settle in and start their vineing process. Starting from seed my son Luke and I Started 4 plants (2 seperate hills)from seed and by the end of June they had taken all the room I had given them and were growing out of their area. Up the rose trellis and across our concrete patio. I think they would have grown over our home if I and my scissors had not taken action to keep them in the area (10x30). They made great and quite large melons, 38lbs in one case but no smaller than 25lbs. All the fruit, 11 total made it to maturity and were very juicy and sweet. They have vined and bloomed and set fruit again with one growing 3 feet off the ground on our rose trellis ,...need to build a stick platform for it lol. Which brings me to my question. Is thier enough time for them ( 5 more so far) to develop to maturity? And is it common for watermelons to have 2 seperate crops from each plant???? I water them really well until they are fully formed and not getting any larger then I cut the water back to whatever nature will give us......my take on M&S's watermelons.......GREAT!!!!!!....thx ,..timetaplant

On the local TV news the other night, they were reporting that many farmers in southern Oklahoma and northern Texas have lost 100% of their crops to excessive moisture in the form of rainfall/constantly wet soil/floodwaters. So, I was thinking to myself that a lot of us may be getting less of a veggie harvest, but at least we haven't lost 100%, right? Ilene, I have talked to lots of 'old farmers/old ranchers' who live in our area (many of them, sadly, have passed away in recent years ) and many of them have told me over and over that all they had to eat in their early years in Oklahoma were whatever crops they could raise or find via foraging/hunting/gathering and whatever game they could shoot. They said that it was a constant struggle to survive, and of course, none of them had any problems with weight gain or obesity. They also said that if one family or another suffered a crop failure, the other local families tried to share what they had so the family would survive. How very spoiled we are by comparison! My dad was one of 11 children. His family was, by his own description, 'poor, white sharecroppers' in the Spanish Fort (Montague County, Texas) area in the 1920s/30s. He said they pretty much lived on whatever crops survived. They usually had a good crop of pinto beans and corn, which they dried and stored for winter. He said they often ate corn meal mush for breakfast, cornbread and whatever else was available for lunch, and cornbread and pinto beans for dinner, day after day after day. How many of us would do that and be glad to have even that food? He did say that they often had good veggies from their own gardens all summer and fall, plus whatever they could put up for winter, and meat was more of a 'treat' or a 'condiment' with veggies and bread being the main portion of the meal, and only small portions of meat available. During the good years that they made a good crop, they would have enough cash to buy salt, flour, baking powder, etc. During bad times they had beans and corn. They usually had their own milk and butter from their own cow, but usually the babies and youngest children got all the milk. Once a year they each got one orange to eat--at Christmas--and that plus a couple of nuts and one or two pieces of Christmas candy was their Christmas gift. Local folks here who are slightly younger than my dad remember a similar lifestyle up to World War II, which gave many young men a chance to get off the farm and earn some badly needed money to send home to 'the folks'. They say that growing a big garden that produced a lot of food for the family was considered a HUGE mark of achievement, and that the local families were quite competitive with one another to see who could feed their family best with what they raised. Frankly, I don't know how they did it. I raise a lot of fruit and veggies, and have great success most years, but if we had to live ONLY off what I could grow or find by foraging (wild berries, fruit, etc.), my family would all be stick-thin! Thankfully we don't have to raise all our own food nowadays! PURPLE CHEROKEE--now that is a great tomato and one of my all time favorites. We just love them. This year they have been HUGE, about twice the size I usually get, and fairly tasty--their flavor isn't quite as good as it is most years, but it is still not as watered-down as many other tomatoes are this year. Black Krim is still our favorite. Brandywine would be our favorite based on flavor alone, but their low productivity keeps them from being our #1 tomato. I am going to (hopefully--and if the weather works with me and not against me) yank out a lot of the spring-planted tomatoes this week, and replace them with new plants for fall tomatoes. I don't usually take out the cherry, grape or currant types as they produce well all summer anyway. The tomatoes that are removed are sort of removed in the order in which they began fruiting--so those that produced ripe fruit beginning in very late April are already gone, those that produced ripe fruit in May/June will soon be gone, and those late ones that are just now producing ripe fruit will get to live until they stop producing, or until the July-planted tomatoes start producing. Sagenscotties, My paste tomatoes have only been so-so this year too. In general, paste tomatoes are more prone to both blossom-end rot and foliar disease when it is excessively wet. However, I am getting tons of big 'uns so I have been using a mixture of big 'uns to make spaghetti sauce and other tomato-based meals like chicken-tortilla soup or taco soup. The larger tomatoes take longer to boil down, of course, since they have a higher water content--especially this year--but they make tasty cooked tomatoes. I'm probably not even going to plant the paste tomatoes I have raised from seed for fall unless we have a sudden drying trend here. I don't see any point in expending the energy to plant them if they aren't going to do any better than the spring-planted paste tomatoes did. There are a couple of exceptions--Orange Banana has produced quite well, and so has Bisignano #2. Dawn

Clothes pins are still usable. We, machine knitters, use them all the time to hold yarn tails down. I also use them for other craft projects as well. Manufacturers should not do away with them ever! Pammyfay, you story is cute. It reminded me of when this young cable salesman came by my home tried to sell the service. I politely told him "no thanks". He responded back by asking: "who do you use to watch TV?". "No one. I use OTA", I replied back. He looked puzzled and asked me: "What's OTA?" in which I said "Over the Air channels". Still looking puzzled, I explained further that we use a roof antenna to pick up these over the air channels. He then asked me: "How much do you pay for the service?". "None, it's free" I replied. His final comment was: "Oh, we can't beat that price then" and walked away. LOL...