Farmerwife, As I read back through your posts, I get the impression your Dad is worried about insect problems from the unmanaged trees, which is why he wants them removed. You mentioned his reason for removing them was not aesthetics. If this is the case, I think he's made this a bigger issue in his mind than it really is. Sure there will be more insects affecting the apples vs. if they were sprayed, but I don't think there would be more insects in an unsprayed apple orchard vs. an unsprayed pasture. If you could at all talk him into it, I simply don't see any downside in just leaving the trees as they be, as an unmanaged orchard. In fact, there could be plenty of upside benefits in leaving the trees. Potential increases sales value of the home and property. Potential part-time or full-time business opportunity for another family member, or potential buyer. Most people would recognize a quick turnaround to renovating an abandoned dwarf apple orchard, vs. planting one from scratch. As much as I am reluctant to mention it, your father is nearing the end of his life (statistically speaking). The property will likely soon pass on to other family members. I believe it will be more valuable as it is, instead of bulldozing the trees. He may be quite surprised how well some of the trees do without any care. Below is a link Milehigh posted on another thread. It is a video of another pretty much abandoned orchard. There are still plenty of edible apples on the abandoned trees. Perhaps your Dad could be inspired to keep his trees from watching this man's story. If you can't talk him into keeping his trees, at least go as slow as possible in helping him destroy his orchard. Give him the maximum amount of time to change his mind. Here is a link that might be useful: PBS video of Nick Botner (86 yrs. old) and his apple orchard

Thanks for the encouragement, all. I will post more as things develop, indeed. Today, those walls you saw at the end of the 3rd video were filled with concrete. Tomorrow the sub-slab plumbing gets roughed in and the ledgers for the Insul-deck will be placed. At the end of this week, the stamped-concrete floors and the concrete slab under the wood floors will be poured. Next week the deck goes on, then gets poured. After the back-fill it'll be time to build the 2nd (main) story walls. It's amazing how quickly everything's been moving, though the excavation took some time, since it's so rocky. Re: Av-mode: yes, since I get a meter feedback in manual mode, I could just use that to set shutter & f, which is actually what I do these days. But when one is getting started, and when one is used to shooting in Av or some more "automatic" mode, it's helpful. The main point is: once you're set, you want to be in manual mode so that you can keep the shutter/f the same, or essentially the same, all the way through the day. A $100 hunting camera sounds like a good idea. I don't know anything about them; I guess they have a manual mode and timer-shutter (or you can hook a remote release to them easily)? Do you have a brand/model recommendation, for this kind of work? Re: difficult settings in the woods: I wouldn't expect the settings to be too difficult - do you expect a lot of light variation or something, as the sun streams through between trees, perhaps? It might just come out looking like my moving-cloudy days, where the light flickers a bit, but the brain can tell that it's "normal". You'll want to set the exposure so that the brightest point isn't too over-exposed, but you can probably get that reading by going out on a bright day, at the sunniest point, and see what you get. Obviously if your variance is too great, you're right, it might just appear to "blink" - I suppose you could experiment with setting the camera in Av-mode and just setting the f, and letting it change shutter-speed every shot, to get a more "neutralized" lighting, but that might not result in a movie to your taste. Re: lot: yes, we love the view.

Android Samsung Mesmirize (Fascinate on other carriers) I love it! Got the wife one first as her old phone was dying and even though she is not the most techy (that's my job) she had it all figured out before I even got mine the following week. It looks as sleek as the iPhone, but has several advantages in my book. 1) Has an microSD slot. Comes with a free 16gig card. If I need more, instead of having to buy a new phone, aka iPhone, I can just swap out to the next size of card. 2) Although battery life is great, it is a removable battery, so if you do use it a lot and have battery life issues, you can swap out a spare. I will give the iPhone credit for the front camera, but that only works in wi-fi zones right now, so I don't consider that a deal breaker. Any app you can find for the iPhone, you can find for the Android. Wish I had the Evo, as it has HDMI out, but the coverage in my area for the carrier is not good. I was thinking about the iPhone for a while, but where I live (Iowa) AT&T's 3G coverage only exists in 4 cities, everywhere else is practically dial-up speeds when surfing. That prompted me to stay with USCellular as they switched to 3G to almost the entire state last May. For me, speed and coverage was the biggest factors. If the iPhone would have been available on USCellular last year, I might have changed my mind. Best feature right now is my desk cradle. I have it beside my bed, and have replaced the alarm clock with it. I can wake up and see the current weather as well as the time. Just my 2 cents worth,

Out of the choices Above I'd say BM is your best bet. Behr products are too watered down and their white is more of a gray so that effects the way the colors comes out when tinted. Stay away from SW they are a bit better than behr but they over price for the amount of TITO in their paint as well. BM offers a beautiful color selection and has an exellent product. HOWEVER I would love to put Dunn Edwards in the running here. We have an amazing selection of nearly 2,000 colors (not mention custom color mathces we can do), a superior paint product and a FREE Professional Color Advisor service (that's me) . Plus we have a ton of "kill test" listed on our website and in our store comparing each of our products to the competition. (: but like I said BM is a nice choice!