I agree that one needs to be very careful about what one brings to a potluck or contributes to the church supper but I've found that even the non-adventurous will accept certain new recipes. They might not ask you for the recipe but you will get a few honest compliments. My husband would be willing to eat the same thing every day but I just seem to crave new tastes. Here are some examples that people have liked: - parsnip cookies - garlic scape hummus - zucchini and raisin pancakes (almost like carrot bread) There's always the chance that a new flavor will hit the big time. First the recipe gets shared and then some regional manufacturer will put it into production. I'm thinking something like red pepper jelly. I think I first tasted it in the 80s but now it's in every "country" shop. For years, I've been buying corn rather than growing it (the racoons won) at a local dairy farm. One of the young relatives grows it to earn money but the relatives have changed over the years. At first, there was a variety of corn, usually 2 different varieties each week, sometimes a third as a new one was ready for picking. Signs would be posted so you knew what kind. I loved that although I didn't always love all the varieties. About two years ago, they switched to a supersweet variety probably succession planted. At the beginning of the season, the corn is a little on the too young side and by the end of the season, well, it's almost not worth buying except it's going to be the last corn until next year. I'm going to start trying other farmstands. I don't think I've had any silver queen corn in two years and I miss it. The price of berries is a good example. I've been making blueberry muffins from berries we picked last summer and next year we better pick more. I used the last ones last weekend and it's only February. I don't buy fresh blueberries at the supermarket. The berries are available but the price is too high for my pocketbook.

The other day National Public Radio mentioned quickly that 20 million dollars worth of South Carolina grown switchgrass has just been shipped overseas for biofuel use. Here in the south former cotton and tobacco fields lie fallow sourrounding communities that are truly in the depth of depression. It is so sad to drive through them. The south has the vast acreage to grow biofuels and hopefully it will become a new source of income. BTW, I could not get into the study, but I have a feeling that the average farmer figured out all of what it says perhaps way back in the 1800's using a bit of common sense.

Thanks for the advice from both of you. s8us89ds - I had to laugh at all your suggestions. :-) All good ideas, most of which we've thought of! I loved your earnestness and how well thought out it was, with the number of easy loops you'd ski, etc.. One important point to note, though, is just HOW rocky it is. It's difficult to convey to anyone who doesn't live in this area just how rocky it is. I have also lived in Maine and Mass. and I've never seen so many rocks. It's like a debris field of granite, mixed in with a little soil. The only area where digging is easy is right around the house, where they filled in (mostly with sand.) Removing the rocks is pretty much out of the question. Oh, also, there are old granite stone walls criss-crossing the woods. (I don't know if I mentioned that before.) We don't want to disturb those, and I am even thinking of clearing around them a bit, since they seem to be fast being swallowed up by dead leaves and such. But it would be nice to have clear trails out to view them. We've also thought of a trail, but we haven't gotten to the point of planning out how we'd do it. With so many rocks, above and below ground, the ground is very uneven. (This wouldn't be much of a problem during the winter when snow evens it out, though.) There's also kind of a boggy area so we'd have to build some sort of wooden bridge or platform in one area, unless we bypassed that area all together. A trail seems great (and we have a "town forest" which has "real" trails yet is only 5 acres, total, so we should be able to do something similar on our land.) It seems like a walking trail would be more doable than a cross-country ski trail, though. Oh, but one problem - we lose a multitude of trees every winter, in wind storms and ice storms. We've had giant trees completely uprooted, and other trees just snap in two. Now it's not just a tangle of thorny bushes, it's a tangle of uprooted and downed trees. The amount of labor needed to clear those downed trees would be great, so we've just cut down the ones which snapped in half (and show from our house) and left the others to do their natural thing.... In any case, right now my biggest concern is working with the transition from yard to woods, and less gardening within the woods (too overwhelming to think about!) All that said, I've rethought this issue a little bit since I posted my initial post. We're going to clear the overgrown blackberry bushes (which form almost an impenetrable border to the woods during the summer) but leave any saplings. That alone will make everything look more tidy. For the most part the cleared area around the house is a basic square (and, by the way, my husband does want to reforest, in part - grass-growing is a never ending battle against nature.) But, we have a little area off to one side of the square which is a perfect area for a firepit. We're going to clear the bushes there and build a stone fire pit. (One would think we'd use the readily-accessible natural stones, but each one is so incredibly heavy and they're half-buried that we will probably use landscaping stones. :-() Then, we just want the transition to woods to look slightly "considered" rather than ignored... at the very least, neatened up. I'd like to grow some lily of the valley... I'd love some wild lupine at the edge, if I can ever get anything to grow. I like the idea of rhododendrons for color. I know there is a woodland botanical garden somewhere in Massachusetts, and they label the native species, and I could visit it to get some ideas.

I'm trying to remember, and I don't think I EVER saw lamb in...um...where I was before. I could find it an hour away at a (very expensive) meat market, but not locally. I seem to recall seeing veal a couple times, but veal is something I won't touch, and so would not notice its presence/absence. Forget finding any bread that wasn't "fluffy" or any fish that wasn't catfish. Don't even think about finding any kind of "exotic" mushroom/pepper/fresh herb. Basically if it can't be sugar coated or deep-fried, isn't hugely processed, doesn't have at least 20% salt/sugar and doesn't contain transfats, forget about finding it there. And forget eating out unless you like fast food or lower quality chains. (They were all a'twitter when Huddle House opened.) Now here? It's not like California where I could literally find anything, but it's pretty darn good. The only thing I've found really lacking is availability of fish (except that d#mned catfish...what the heck is it with the blasted catfish everywhere?) and I do have to really hunt for things like tahini, miso, etc.