The concerns over the future of our website are quite understandable, and in reading through the comments and suggestions on this thread I think I've gotten some excellent ideas. I hope I can use some of these to forward the cause of keeping all of that information available. There are some factors that no one else will know about why we must close down our website. The key element is that Vintage Gardens is a publicly owned corporation. Many of our customers think that I am the owner, or one of several, but in fact we are owned by shareholders. In order to protect all of the interests involved and to minimize liability the commercial site needs to shut down. Our database is interwoven with our sales system, so we are unable to shut down the appearance of selling roses and still keep the database going. What is critical here is the saving of the data and getting it out to the world as soon as we can. That does require developing a searchable database, and The Friends of Vintage Roses have been looking for some time now for anyone who could help with that on a volunteer basis. For the short term, the Friends have a plan to upload, by class all of the roses from the VG website, and from our own database inherited with the rose collection. Our first effort will be simply to upload, class by class the information about the rose classes which I wrote and have updated many times, and will update again with new insights and challenges to my own past thinking. Along with these will go the class growth habits and the drawings that I developed in 1998-99. Included will be new versions of these growth habit illustrations, a taste of which some of you have found on the blog I recently started as Curator of The Friends of Vintage Roses. It's called "3000 Roses and Counting..." With each class upload we will include a listing of the varieties. More details will need to wait for a searchable format. In the longer term we hope that the Friends will receive enough support to build a searchable database, allowing for the sort of interaction that now exists on the VG site. The development of that database could happen very quickly and we've actively been canvasing donors to help with this, though so far we have not found the money. Kim raises a really good point, which is that the old site should somehow be archived online...at least the data part of it. If anyone has some knowledge about how to do that, we would be very grateful for assistance. Keep in mind however that the sales links would all have to be disabled, and all pages that involve the commercial entity. That old information is about to change to some degree. Though I do not expect that we will lose information that is valuable, there are too many references to "we" which refer to the old business, and so each description will be re-thought and re-written. One element that has not existed in the VG website is the provenance of each rose. This does exist in the VG Book of Roses, and I hope to bring this into The Friends' web database. Any attempt to pirate the information, however legal it may be, could be personally damaging to me, and I hope that folks will refrain from that, especially if they value this thing that I spent so long to create. I would be happy to work with anyone who has workable ideas for making an archived version of the VG website database. I will soon be archiving Vintage Gardens' presence on HMF. Simutaneously The Friends of Vintage Roses will upload their database of roses which will number about 5000 entries. This is the list inherited by the nonprofit, and includes roses that are no longer in the collection, a thing that I believe many of you will find worthwhile, particularly from a historic perspective. I am sorry that I have not been able to find the time to respond to the hundreds of emails I have received over the past year asking what will happen to our website. But, I've had a few things on my hands, and the next 10 weeks may grind me to a pulp. But, please believe that this is a top priority for me, because I know how important it is to so many people. First though, I have a few refunds to issue... Cheerily! Gregg (Vintage Gardens)

So Easy to Preserve is a great book to have, especially for all the basic recipes. Good to know that it can always be trusted. Not sure I'd fully agree that little has changed since 1978 as a lot of research has been done since then, especially on low-acid processing. But the really big notable change happened in the mid 70's and the USDA revisions of 1976 so I'd expect Farm Journal to have picked up on them prior publishing the '78 edition. Hope you enjoy So Easy. I use it often. Dave

Scott: I was really impressed with that articles proclamation of all they're doing to help the farmers. Allowing them to bale hay from the conservation sites? That's impressive knowing the sentiment of conservationists. I had no idea of all the back up waterways and isn't that just nice. Probably not enough, though. But the interest rates and availability of the loans - while nice - concerned me as I know we really cannot afford it unless they have some time of reserve built up for them. Note: I really don't care if we can afford it or not. A need is a need. George; I couldn't agree more. From my point of perspective (way below the poverty level) permaculture is the only solution until such time we are not allowed to work the land: a topic for another forum. Thanks for the link. I'll give it a ear. I'm still for Hugelkulture as much as I can stand to dig. bon

Dear INKognito: Befriend the contractor and lead foreman; let them know you want the garden preserved as much as is possible. Talk to them in terms of cost. Give them some figures re damages, replanting, purchase of new stock, etc. Estimate the worth of the garden in labor and materials. Estimate the worth of intangibles like not being able to replace mature clumps of perennials and older tree/shrub specimens, plants with sentimental value, and so on. Some may be priceless. Engage the homeowner in this discussion if it seems approppriate. Apply pressure - gently. Remove what you can and make a path(s)if possible for the workers to use. Put special,expensive,fragile, and/or easily transplanted specimens in a holding bed; replant when the work is completed. Be prepared to lose most of what is in their work areas. Be there to "supervise" the scaffolding installation. Cover plants briefly with breathable landscape fabric/tarps/old sheets on days they are scraping paint. Remove at the end of the work day; replace in the AM. Removing old shingles is one of the dirtiest jobs in house renovation. The roofers throw the old shingle material all over the place with great abandon. The trouble with laying down tarps is that without being able to see the plants beneath, the workers tend to walk on the tarps, throw lumber on the tarps, push eqipment over the tarps, etc. --as if there were nothing beneath. A real problem . . . Look at it as a chance to re-do the garden, correcting things you weren't happy with, as well as a chance to make a bit more money -- assuming the owners are going to have the garden restored after the house renovations are completed. I have had experience with just this sort of problem on several occasions. Difficult, indeed. Ginger