I just add this message to respond to the notion of a rose sale or auction. Following the lead of Jeri n Clay, the Ventura County Rose Society put on major rose auctions of rare and unusual roses for about ten years; first, annually, then later every two years. As an educational device, the auction was a great success for those putting it on. As someone who started out as a contributor to the catalog that accompanied the auction and wound up writing most of it, I learned a lot. (Most of it had to do with commercial viability.) As a financial effort, it was also a great success. HOWEVER,it was every bit as labor intensive as the traditional rose show, involved enormous amounts of energy and time (gathering and storing of roses, mailing off winning bids to those out of state, etc.) and engendered some antipathy on the part of rose society members who did not want to be involved in what they regarded as scut work; (unfortunately, a lot of life involves doing scut work.) Eventually, we gave it up with 2011 being the last of the auctions. Over the course of the years we probably distributed over a thousand roses, most of which were OGRs or unusual and rare (Clark roses from Austalia before they became easily available, frix.) The only way for the enterprise to operate was to open up a national audience in order to find buyers for roses not well known--even if said roses were perfectly suited to the Ventura County climate--e.g. chinas, noisettes, and teas. The trouble is that the audience for OGRS and unusual roses tends to be spread out across the country in numbers not large enough to sustain viable commercial operations. I might add that the practices of many rose societies in permitting widespread use of cuttings from rose shows, celebrations and the like cuts down on the potential profit or even transactions. I am reminded that Frank Benardella used to dip his show roses in Round-up so as to discourage people from using his entries as sources for free roses... Jim D

If the dump trucks are tri-axle's, then each of them could be carrying 20 cubic yards of soil, depending on the soil type. That translates into 300 cubic yards of material that could weigh 450 tons. Trying to push that much dirt any distance with an 800 pound garden tractor, regardless of brand, is going to be difficult and very time consuming. As larsol mentioned, a skid-steer loader will lift and carry all fifteen loads to where you want it in a single day. I suggest that you rent one or if you don't know how to run one, then hire an experienced operator with his own machine. Every machine made comes with its own set of limitations. It's not that a Case 400 series isn't a capable machine. It's just the wrong machine for the task. Even the skid-steer is a bit of compromise but it will do the job. A 450 Case, 450 Deere or D-4 Cat bulldozer would be more appropriate and likely faster at levelling and grading if you position the truck loads properly. A dozer is perfectly safe to use on your tile field. It will also pop stumps out of the ground and push those pesky boulders into the back acreage. And if you want the boulders buried, a good operator can do that for you too. Too bad you don't need 100 loads or so because when it's difficult to find places to dump, most contractors are happy to put a blade onto a dump site in exchange for having a place to dump close to where they are excavating. For 15 loads, it doesn't pay but talk to the guy, he may know of someone with a machine to take care of this. Where you need the Case is AFTER the dirt has been spread out. If you intend to seed or lay sod, the Case with a three-point hitch and York Rake can save you a huge amount of time and will aid you in the fine grading/levelling. Your friend wasn't telling you that the Case is no good. He was just telling you that it isn't big enough for the task at hand.

LOL! I got my first little Brownie box camera when I was 11. I played with B/W film all during junior high. In high school, I worked on the yearbook and school newspaper--we did only B/W, but all our own processing and developing. Lots of experimenting and talking to other photographers...some workshops. Got the job as a photographer/darkroom tech at the college I went to...met my husband in the darkroom. GRIN (Yep, we've heard ALL the jokes.) By that time, my dad saw the potential of photography. He'd always wanted to own his own business, so he apprenticed with a local pro, then went into business. So...I was a photographer first, but he made it a business while I was in college. After college, and marrying my guy...someone from our church asked us to do some wedding photos...her maid of honor asked and so on...before long I was 24 and doing 50 weddings a summer. Whew. We joined local, regional, and national professional photographer organizations. LOTS of great educational opportunities there...I studied and learned and studied some more. Yes, I learned a lot about lighting. Photography IS lighting...then composition and feeling. It was a fun career. I closed my studio in my early 40's when we had an opportunity to move overseas for a while. By the time we came back, digital photography had swept in...I've learned just enough to do family photos for us. I keep my hand in doing portraits for a few select past clients from time to time. Remember...it isn't the camera, it's the person behind the camera who creates the art. Cameras can make it easier...but the artsy stuff comes from within you. Enjoy it!

Quote:"your area is so full of wonderful subjects" Years ago I drove 18 wheelers covering the entire U.S.A. Every year Labor Day seemed to open the flood gates as people began their annual vacation migration in search of something to see. But what I found most amazing is that for every person that heads out of your community there is another traveling vast distances to come see your town. To that end I used to offer people a challenge. Take out a road map of your state and locate where you live then take a simple drawing compass and scribe circles at 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 & 50 miles. Now locate all the communities within those circles and contact their chamber of commerce for information on sites to see in their community. You will find a vast wealth of sites to see, all within a short one hour commute of your house, and many of them are absolutely free of admission. Now consider how much money you can save in fuel, food and lodgings and you have just saved enough to pay for that camera or new lenses you been dreaming about, not mention that you can continue that project year around instead of trying to pack it all into two weeks. Now in regards to how long it takes to edit 1300 photos. Actually the problem is not as difficult as it might seem. I began my interest in photography with a Pentax Spotmatic, which was the first 35mm SLR to have a built in through the lens light meter. (The Nikon F offered a light meter in an accessory viewfinder and Canon had not yet got into the professional SLR market). Lenses were manual focus, manual aperture and exposure was controlled by manipulating the shutter speed and lens aperture to center a match needle indicator in the view finder. As if that was not enough, in those days most films had an ASA (ISO) rating ranging from 64 to 325. I can vividly remember when AGFA introduced a 1000 ASA B&W film for the first time, and Fuji film almost took over the industry with a 500asa high resolution color print film. In those days getting the correct exposure was at best a bit iffy so it was common practice amongst the pro's and advanced amateurs to use a technique called "Bracketing" In fact, Bracketing is an automatic feature on most DSLR's but most people fail to use it. Bracketing is a technique where you shoot one frame at the measured exposure, then a second frame one f-stop under and a third frame one f-stop over. We could then push or pull an additional f-stop in the darkroom if need be. In those days there was no "live view" or "instant replay" so that is how we could insure we would have a usable print when we processed the film. I still rely heavily on that technique when i am out in the field where it would be difficult to return and try again, especially when shooting birds or wildlife where the shots cannot be repeated. When shooting macro shots of plants & flowers on a windy day I often set the mode to "Sports" which is shutter priority mode keeping the shutter speed as high as possible. This has a two fold effect. 1. By keeping the shutter speed very high it assures stop action when the subject is moving in the wind and 2. it keeps the aperture open, limiting depth of field, which generally puts the background out of focus giving a nice soft pastel background that does not detract from the subject. Back in the days of film bracketing the exposures was rather expensive when you considered the cost of film and processing, but in this age of digital when i go in the field I carry 5 or 6 SD cards and 5 sets of batteries so I am not concerned about wasting a shot or two if I can be sure that I will ultimately have the shot i want. In addition, I generally do not take just one shot, but rather I like to shoot a series of shots that show different aspects of the subject. By example, I am attaching a series I took of the evolution of a Dandelion. My brother said i was as crazy as an outhouse rat for taking pictures of dandelions but I like the outcome. DANDILION PLANT IN BLOOM DANDILION BLOSSOM DANDILION IMMATURE SEED POD DANDILION MATURE SEED POD DANDILION MATURE SEED POD DANDILION SEEDS