bebe - If you really want to do this, I will give you my recommendations. First of all, like Dave and Jean said - the main thing is to not disturb the ground where the field lines are located. But.....there's nothing wrong with setting something on top of it, as long as it can't damage or alter the septic field. You say you would like to have a raised bed on top of the ground? That's easy. How big of a box are you talking about? I have one on top of mine, but also realize that if the field lines ever have to be unclogged, the box will have to be shoved out of the way by the backhoe doing the digging. This will of course destroy the box.....If it is a fairly small garden you're talking about, simply put down a 6" layer of gravel on the ground, then set your empty raised bed box on top of that...Staple some professional grade landscaping fabric in the bottom, then fill with soil. Let me know if I can help you further.... EG

I can relate to the second one & that's the reason I'm glad that I'm pretty meticulous about putting my photos into albums & dating them & identifying who is in the picture. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten a phone call from a friend asking me to check my albums & let them know what year such & such took place. And no matter how well you know someone if you don't see them often (or never again) there is a high likelihood you'll forget who they are. When my parents died my brother & I went through a huge photo album of them & their friends from the 1930's & 1940's. The pictures were great - picnics outings to state parks, parties, etc., but no one was identified in any of the pictures & as wonderful as they were we ended up throwing most of them away.

Hi All - I still haven't read the Kingsolver book, but on a recent trip I plowed *most* of the way through the Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. It's ... dense, but really interesting. He talks about the hidden costs of the industrial food chain (fossil fuels, ruined rural communities, national health, and the treatment of livestock in CAFOs, among other costs). He compares this to local agriculture, to "organic industrial" (Earthbound Farms, for example) and to the shortest food chain, that of the hunter-gatherer. He talks about how the heavily subsidized mountain of American "commodity corn" is effecting the quality of food around the world. He even contends that grass-fed beef may be more healthful than the corn-fed salmon now being sold. My book group read this book while I was away, and I don't think everyone enjoyed it; one friend said: "I found Omnivore painful, interesting, but not suitable for pleasure reading. Great book for Christmas." Not sure if the last part was tongue in cheek or not. After reading this book, I am checking labels and trying to avoid products that contain corn or corn syrup - and that's pretty much everything on the shelves at the supermarket! I hope to pick up Animal, Vegetable after I get through a short stack of books I need to read for various other reasons, and thought you might want to know about the Pollan book too.

Bonnie, I bought a big box of pickle cucumbers from the farmer's market and the pickling mix at Walmart for dill pickles. It has no yucky additives listed. I did add fresh dill though and to one batch I added a chopped jalapeno for some spice and it was good. Maybe try a batch of freezer jam first before canning? My grapes are ripe for pickin, so are the tomatoes, pumpkins, herbs, lots of strawberries. Now I need to get busy and start canning. I'm going to try the tomato sauce recipe someone posted from the harvest forum and also the recipe out of the book that has cinnamon and nutmeg which sounds different and yummy. So far I've only read canning recipes that call for tomato sauce or puree to begin with. How do I make the raw tomatoes into sauce or puree? Slip the skins like Cnetter mentioned? How? Maybe I should invest in a hand crank mill like David--are they expensive? All of my grapes have seeds and maybe I could use it for that too? Any advice is appreciated :) I liked the homemade ketchup idea. Most of the ketchup sold is full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Heinz makes organic now that is just sugar instead of HFCS. How else would we get kids to eat most anything?! Peppers...we've eaten most of the sweet ones and have some orange ones just about ready and are they good! *Italian Roasters--I bought as transplants and the tag only says 'Italian Roasters" describing them as mild & pungent and they are not mild! I had a small get together where everyone brought their own meat to barbecue and we provided all the side dishes from the garden. I sliced and grilled only one of the roasters with a bunch of other veggies from the garden and all of our guests were on fire including my husband who loves anything as hot as possible. The jalapenos are milder. Maybe they were misnamed? I don't know what to do with them and about 20 of them. *Red cherry bomb peppers- best for salsa? *Lotsa jalapenos-I'd like to make jelly Cnetter I have crabapples too. Next year I'll try some jelly with 'em! Plum Jelly--gotta a good recipe David? A friend called and says they have hundreds ripe and falling of their tree and to come pick em. I need to turn down any request for a social life during the month of September!