You know, it was not expensive in money OR time to do this, it was pretty darned simple. :) DH got a PS EyeToy color camera for $5.00 at Gamestop, and YahooLive is the host for the cam, sound and chat, at no cost to us. My husband had the know-how to get things going, but you can find out online and it isn't difficult or complicated. The number of people viewing the cam and talking in chat crashes my husband's computer sometimes, but we just restart things and everything's fine. We wanted to hatch chicks anyway, so thought we'd share the experience. The cam just pointed through the viewing panes in the lid of the incubator, now we set it inside the brooder box. Baby chicks DO have a wonderful effect on all who gaze upon them, it's like Valium for your eyes. *L* And yeah, it is VERY remarkable that Chicken Sister has babies this late in life--but then, both of the boys LOVE her to distraction, you should have seen them run over and burble over her when we brought her back from the vet after her egg-binding adventure. What a couple of love-struck chuckleheads. :) It was very sweet, they missed her so! We'll be hatching again the weekend of June 21st, and will resume chickam then, if anyone wants to watch. We will have our incubators issues solved before we start more eggs. Velvet ~:>

You will want to keep the lid on the container as the caterpillars will wander in-between instars looking for places to molt. And when they get ready to pupate, they can disappear and you won't find them until they eclose. One person on the forum had one pupate on the side of the toilet. I've found them on the phone cord and under cabinets. Just cause they're small doesn't mean they won't take off!

Hi, Wanted to add these to my want list. Thornless blackberries Bunching onions Garlic chives Chives Ground cherry All peppers that are left Green onions Corn bi color sweet Tomato amana orange Green lentils peas Corn hulless popcorn kandy corn Blue hopi corn Indian Spearmint pumpkin big max Dills giant Atlantic small sugar Triple treat jaradale Small sugar Early sweet sugar Tomato container choice Brandywine yellow cherokee purple Pink brandywine Matts wild cherry Red pear Striped cavern Tommy toe Yellow cherry Yellow pear Greens 5 color rainbow chard Watermelon sweat Siberian Florida giant Melons Amish Honey king Jumbo hales best Swan lake Wonder melin Tigger Summer squash black zucchini early crookneck Yellow crookneck Early prolific straight neck Brussel sprouts Celery mary Washington asparagus Thanks so much again Lisa

dbarron, When we turned our screened-in porch into a fully enclosed, proper sunroom a couple of years ago, we turned one part of it into a proper mudroom wit a boot tray and shoe shelves and hanging racks for coats, with shelves for hats and gloves. I LOVE it. The mudroom catches so much mud and dirt that used to make it into the house, and with two firefighters in the family, there's always lots of dirty, sooty muddy, shoes, boots and socks. I It helps that a lot of the dirt and mud are left in the mudroom instead of being tracked all over the house. Now, if only I could convince Tim to build a mini Mud Room at the doorway on the opposite side of the house that leads out into the dog yard. Our dogs track in more mud than the people ever have. Living in the country is hysterically entertaining though. Yesterday when I opened the front door to let a cat go out, three banty chickens tried to run indoors. I don't know why. Just to see if they could I guess. I'm also astonished at how often a hummingbird will fly in an open door. Why? We feed them outside. Invariably they settle on a blade of the ceiling fan and ride it around and around the room while a cat or two go crazy trying to figure out how to jump out and nab the hummingbird. I have to put the cats in another room behind a closed door and turn off the fan and then catch the hummingbird and release it back outdoors. Then the cats sulk all day because I didn't let them catch the hummingbird that was foolish enough to venture indoors. One of my worst country living experiences (out of many) was one day when I was out working in the garden in 2009 and looked up and saw about 25 head of cattle running straight for me and the garden. I am pretty sure my simple little woven wire fence wouldn't have stopped them. However, we had an outer fence on one side only (the road side, from whence escaped cattle tend to come) with three strands of barbed wire and that diverted them. I had visions of being trampled, but it didn't happen. It took about a month of odd cattle appearances/disappearances for us to figure out whose cows they were and how they were making it onto our property---seemingly appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing as quickly. Once we alerted the rancher, whose land did not directly abut our land, he checked his water gaps and found a problem and fenced it and I haven't been visited by a herd of cows since. We've also been visited by goats, but not in a few years. There's also an escaped pea fowl roaming the area. Its owners and passers by have seen it on our property but I haven't, making me wonder if they were seeing the female wild turkey that hung around here with the injured leg until she healed. She might have looked like a pea fowl to someone driving up the road. Never a dull moment here. It is a zoo or a circus here just about every day. George, I did a lot of bee research before concluding it was more work than I was willing to take on until Tim retires and is here to help me more with the property and the animals. We have tons of native bees to do pollination (and all the hollies are in bloom and bees are everywhere around them this week) so we don't "need" bees because there aren't any around, but I want bees for the honey. Dawn