Fancifowl - RELAX! No harsh feelings between us Farmers, please! As for me, you can own as many rifles as you please! I trust you with that. And consider you to be a reasonible person, not one that shoots the paper boy every morning for trespassing, now do you?!? (Again: Just kidding you!) Seriously: It's not other peoples business to tell you what to do and what not to do. Period. As I layed out in my previous post: The toughest laws and rules will not help against peoples greed and stupidity. 'Disease control' is used as an excuse to force AnimalID through. The real reason behind it is: Take away farming from us Farmers. If they (Monsanto & others) get their patents through - then woe to us all!!!! This is just the beginning. Are we going to let that happen? Disease control again: Laws on it or not: In the end, all comes down to common sense. There will be always a chance your stock/flock gets hit. 'Cause sh*t happens. My first suggestion to keep diseases at bay: Provide the best environment, the healthiest food, fresh air, keep them out in the open whenever possible. Just care about them. Look after them - you will notice anything strange straight away. Rose PS: What about Earl Butz? Don't know a thing about him. PS: Fancifowl, please look into it: Go to www.greenpeace.com - search for 'Monsanto' and see what's coming up.

Up, up and not away!

I use an app called List Master. It's sort of a cross between a spreadsheet and a database. I downloaded the free app and paid ($9) for the full version within twenty minutes. I can sort on any value and I keep pictures of what each one looked like before I planted it in the list. I'm also keeping my lists separated by year. I can copy what the seller said about it into a note field. I also track date, origin, location, color, size potential and price. It's easy to add another field if I think of something else to track. Kathy

Well, the tree is down, boxed up along with all of the ornaments, etc. I also took the decs off of the trees in the urns that flank the front door:)) The small trees are lighted and look pretty even without the decorations. Outside garland and wreaths are going to remain until March. Also, the china cabinet and seasonal garlands in the house remain and will probably stay in place until March as well. I especially enjoyed the posts about the decoration or two you overlook. One year I had a Christmas moose that I didn't notice until July that year. It was tucked into a basket on the soffet in the kitchen. This year I am scanning the rooms carefully to be sure I've gotten it all. The house is clean and the attic looks fairly neat. A good feeling to start the work week with it all put away. The china closet packs up into a closet in the dining room, so that's really no big deal and besides, it looks nice with the winter garland on the dining room table. We'll see how long I can look at the holiday china and stemware before I cave in and put that away too! I would like to keep it in place until its time to decorate for Easter! It was fun reading all of posts. I was surprised at how many responses my post generated! Happy New Year to all!