marknmt; Boy I'll say the Liberty's are a machine!!! You need to change your signage to say "Please Pick The Fruit" or "Please Pick One Apple EVERY TIME You Walk By" (That way you can manage the "Thinning" they are doing). LOL I think both Earliblaze and State Fair are very good early apples for out of hand eating, but then I don't have anything else to compare. (Except the bland apples in the store) My Mac's, RD's, and Haralson's are a ways out yet. Seems like every year I look forward to my McIntosh being ready as much as anything though, because we freeze a lot for pies. And the tree is huge so we have plenty to give away too. Macs don't hold up under cooking and kinda mush, but the flavor is as good as it gets in my mind. eboone; This year my early apples turned out pretty good, mainly because for some reason there wasn't the pest pressure and even the birds didn't do as much damage as usual. Generally (and especially last year during the drought) the birds hit the early apples as they get to turning red and I'll usually have a lot of damaged apples. It wasn't too bad this year in that regard. We had a couple timely rains a bit in advance of the apples being ready and I think that helped to size them up some. Speaking of rain, my Mac has a tendency to drop apples when it's about time to harvest, and a couple years ago we'd had so much rain and they were so juicy, when they'd drop they'd just explode. No such thing as picking up any drops that year!

I went today ...and I missed some speakers I really wanted to hear...they were all sold out of their garlic...most of their t.shirts were sold out and I missed athe artist to sign my copy. The lines for most all the food was so long that I limited myself to blueberry icecream, organic pizza, a drink made with organic beets, ginger, applejuice and somethingelse that was very good! I did manage to purchase a bunch of different tshirts in the political tents! I saw a neighbor who lives a few houses down from me on MDI, and other neighbors as well. I marveled the most over the cashmere goats and the angora rabbits...Admiring the spinning and carting going on at the same time. I also enjoyed watching the animals get sheared and how the wool felt fresh from being shaved and how the lanolin lingered on my fingers. I ran through every craft tent looking for leeann nikon hand painted silk scraves ( but couldnt find her --darn thats year 2 now I have missed her there!) The horse pull contest was quite incredible as DS 6yo said that the butt muscles were really large and strong! Hey I got there with only 2 hours to see everything- Next year Iam dragging my family with me on Friday and put up tents ther at the fair grounds and stay and be a part of it and actually enjoy it . I would have love to contra dance, or sit and listen to the folk singers that played all day. Or have painted up my childs face or watch them play at the large childrens section of the fair in the children events and games. It was such a blurrrrr... hey did any one get to hear Percy Schmeiser speak? Is there a video of the 2 days he spoke? Lynn Miller looked like a great one,too as well as Jason Kafka... Never again will I do what I did this year and just dart in at the last 2 hours on the last day! I did get a good deal on Sweet Annie!

homefry....It's easy to tell you are a professional, and a honest guy as well. I think your prices are more than fair. It's easy to see what kind of time and effort you put into your display, as well as your product. You will never be able to please everyone. I say as long as you have a clear conscience and your covering your bills, that's all that matters. I took some bhut jolokias to a local produce stand located at a "flea market". This is similar to an organized yard sale where people rent tables and sell whatever they please for you guys who have never heard of "flea markets". I spoke to him a few months ago and he expressed interest in selling any peppers I had left over. I had no intentions of trying to get rich, I just thought if I could pay for my soil and ferts, that would be nice. He's giving me $1.50 a lb for my habanero, chimayo, red savina, and Numex Twilight.When I took him some bhut jolokias, I suggested $1 a pod. He snorted and said he wouldn't be able to sell them for that much. I left him 18 and he said he would try to sell them 2 for $1. I don't really think he knows exactly what they are. I have more than I can use and maybe someone will be able experience something they otherwise would never have been able to. I won't find out if they sold or not until I call him on Friday. Tim

We have two Dell desktops. First one is a Dimension (3 yrs old, I suppose) with no problems. Funny thing is that when we ordered it, they also sent not one, but four, all-in-one printers, too. It was a nightmare to get them to take three back, which I insisted upon because I didn't want to end up paying for them somehow. Second is an Inspiron 531 that's one year old and was purchased at Walmart - works great, but we had one computer issue (bad power supply fan), and a heck of a lot of aggravation navigating their customer support, even while having all the necessary info, original box, etc, at hand. Dell replaced it, finally. I knew the precise problem but still got obstructed by their PC tracking system. They just couldn't recognize the PC, so I kept getting cut off after a long wait, live folks, etc. I had to keep calling back and trying...and giving them the model number was no use, they needed the right customer ID number. Turns out their info kept sayign walmart was the owner and they couldn't change it to make us the owner. 2) Also, I knew exactly what the problem was, but they don't take that for an answer and I had to keep going through online diagnostics so they could confirm it. Eventually they were even running Citrix from India to assess, wasting more time since I kept telling them the problem: bad power supply! Guess what the problem was? Yes, bad power supply. So they sent a guy with one and installed it a couple days later. I think it got resolved only because I knew something about the problem and lead them to the solution. That was a nightmare, but maybe that's what I get for buying it through Walmart. Buy direct if you use Dell.