I have ordered from McMurray, once a few years ago, and then just this spring. I had gotten 25 chicks the first time, they were great birds, the white leghorns lay like crazy! Even years later, if I give them a break during the winter, they start laying like fiends. I don't like the taste as much as the araucana hen eggs though. Those are the best tasting eggs, as far as chicken eggs go, IMO. This year, I got 27 chicks and the homesteaders delight. I learned to never order banties with full size chickens ever again. The 3 Japanese banties I got, one was DOA. Also the weather was very cold when they were shipped, which didn't help. :( The second banty wasn't looking very well, and died the next day. :( Another bird (a golden campine) had been acting funny, the poor thing would walk around in circles, and would twist its neck. The little one didn't eat and died 3 days later. Not sure if it was born with a neurological problem or what. None of the other birds have caught anything, so I'm guessing it was either a genetic defect or a neurological problem? So far I had one duckling die from the Homesteaders delight, not sure why. It had a closed eye when I got it, and it died from unknown causes a few days after I got it. Other than that the other chicks seem okay. I may try another hatchery because I want to try and find some different chickens and muscovy ducks. It's always good to shop around, IMO. Murray McMurray have good shipping prices however. Customer service is okay.

I have and tasted the following fruits from the list: Aronia: Productive, bit too tart to eat fresh. wonderful to add it into juice. Plant is easy to grow. Chinese Haw: Sweet ,but not too sweet. little tart and sour. The source tasted like cranberry source we use in the Christman dinner. Very popular in China, although the fruit size is a lot bigger. Street vendors string a dozens of them on a long wooden or bamboo stick and coat them with sugar to sale to the kids as snack. Goumi: sweet-tart. My has small fruit, about pea size. Can be eaten fresh. The flower is sweet, pleasant. The plants is easy to grow. Japanese Raisin Tree: Tree itself can grow very tallll. The fruit is very sweet, but not pure sweet like sugar. Its sweetness has some other taste in it. I can't descrip the undertone taste . When we talk about the sweetness of the plants, for example, Stevia's leaves is very sweet but many people do not like the undertone taste. I vote mulberry the #1 favorite minor berry. The tree is easy to grow, the fruit is abundant, and fruit is sweet and juicy. It tastes better than raspberry, backberry or, other commercially grow berries. For people who are lucky in the south, Loquat is a good choice too. The tree is about 10-15' tall, the fruit is a bit smaller in a size of pingpong ball. When it is ripe, it is sweet and juicy. I have current grow in my yard. balck, red, and white. They can be eaten fresh but not particular good taste. It is better to juice them and mix them with other sweeter fruit juice. Another minor berry I like to grow is gooseberry. Pick Poorman. The fruit is balanced sweet and tart, very flavorful. It definately can be eaten fresh.

Austins are not necessarily more disease resistant than Harkness roses, quite the contrary - of course it depend on the location where you garden. I have Compassion, for example, which is a Harkness rose, and in my garden, in a terribly humid blackspot inferno in the eastern coastal region Compasion has been always 100% blackspot free despite the fact that it is planted in a semi-shady spot. Moreover, it gives me wonderfully fragrant flowers. This Compassion came from Pickering, my first one that I discarded was virused was grafted on Dr. Huey. The newer Fryer roses also have decent disease resistance. And there are Meanwhile the Austins must be sprayed here with 1 or 2 exception. Your mileage may vary, since in the middle of the country the blackspot pressure may not be so severe. If you decide to order from David Austin, ask around which roses you should stay away from due to virus problems - as far as I know Sharifa Asma kept coming from them virused. (And if a plant is virused you cannot do anything, it will decline sooner or later, especially in a cold zone.) I would also recommend you to check out the new very disease resistant Kordes roses, most of them will probably be hardy for you and quite a number of them have very good fragrance. I suggest to visit Pickering nurseries website and look at the selection what they have. Check the "winter hardy" roses" cross reference it with the " disease resistant roses" and then again cross reference it with the 'fragrant roses". If that is too much, Palatine has a smaller list - they deliver the biggest bareroots (grafted) plants I have ever seen. Both companies graft on multiflora (this understock started from seed, not from cuttings) so you will get virus free plants. The only contraindication to these roses is if your soils is very alkaline (though you can adjust that with garden sulfur). Pickering's website is open for browsing but don't list the new prices yet. Ordering usually starts in August or September and you can reserve your plants for the proper planting time in your area. It make sense to order early because the best and newest roses (new Austins, new Kordes' like Laguna some Harkness) are sold out fast.

I'll be the odd (wo)man out here. I love to cook, but I've been doing since I was 11 yrs old, and frankly cooking 7 days a week is drudgery. Add in breakfast and/or lunch and it's a pain. I loved my career and it wasn't unusual to be gone 12-13 hrs, 5 days/wk. Weekends were crammed with errands and family/friends. We are fortunate to live in one of the greatest restaurant areas in the world: the San Francisco Bay Area. There is great food at all price points. You can eat for $5 or $500, but either way you could eat well -- check out NYTimes' Seth Kugel's visit last month to Portland, where he gave himself an $8/meal budget and was wowed by the amazing meals he got from the local food trucks. When I worked it wasn't unusual for us to go out 4-5x/wk. The question was, "What country do you want to eat today?" We could do Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cal-Mex, American, Moroccan, Korean, French, Italian, Burmese, Greek, and more - all within 1 mile walk, and usually several iterations of each one (you couldn't even count how many Chinese restaurants of various regionalities there were). Now we're retired. We have both money and time. When I feel like cooking, I make the dishes that took too much time when I was working - long slow braises or slow-roasting, or dishes that just require an enormous amount of prep. But we still go out 3-5x/wk, When we travel around the area as we like to do (we just got back from Napa last week and will be in Sonoma next month), we travel specifically to eat. In Napa, we had amazing, elegant, fabulous Cal-French food that I would never bother cooking in a million years. There were brilliant combinations, such as the black cod served with a seafood sabayon, roasted matsutake mushrooms, and the tiniest perfect baby turnips that had no bitterness at all. Or an amazing carpaccio, dressed with nothing but a touch of Meyer lemon EVOO. I cook when I want to, but dining out is simply more fun. No shopping, no prep, no dirty dishes, no leftovers, no fuss. Yes, I could grow my own piquillo peppers and buy Ceylon cinnamon -- but why? I'd rather go to the great Spanish tapas restaurant a few minutes away and have them roast, skin and stuff the peppers with fresh chevre; roast, skin and sprinkle the cinnamon on fresh beets; and make that perfect paella 'tradicionale" for my spouse and the dreamy Fideua Negre, noodle paella with squid ink, for me. I mean, do I seriously want to buy a pressure cooker just for my octopus? Why should I bother cleaning and skinning a cephalopod when there's at least a dozen restaurants that make fabulous smoke-grilled octopus within 5 miles of our house? Should I want to soak the bacalhau in 8 changes of water over two days? It would just be so much easier to go to the Cuban or Portuguese or Italian restaurants, and have a couple of orders of really amazing salt cod fritters or roasted salt cod with polenta, instead! The take-out food these days is so much better quality than before. One place offers a marvelous frozen (bake it at home) chicken pot pie - perfect butter pastry, organic chicken breast and organic vegetables - all they offer is either a fried chicken sandwich on artisanal roll with housemade slaw, or the pot pie. That's it; they open 4 days/wk for 3 hrs a day and then go home to raise their baby daughter. Lines out the door every day. One specialty market with various food sellers (we lust after their pork tomahawk chop - wowie! What a hunk of meat!) has lovely little frittatas with artichoke, red pepper and Gruyere. My DH hates frittatas, so I buy one for myself while he gets the penne with San Marco marinara and Kurobuta pork meatballs; that way we both win. I loathe Food Network. When I write up reviews on the restaurants we've eaten at (I do it for my own archives, not to publish them), I often refer negatively to "Food Network chefs" - cooks who slop the food out as fast as possible, in ridiculous combinations of too many ingredients. They don't know the difference between a sauce Amoricaine and a Bordelaise. Bleh. It's taken me decades to get my DH off the crappy food he grew up with. But he's finally come around, so that when we drop $$$$ on the perfect dinner at Etoile or Spoonbar or La Folie, he says, "That was absolutely worth every penny." And you know, it is. Here is a link that might be useful: NYTimes Frugal Traveler does Portland on the cheap This post was edited by jkom51 on Wed, Sep 10, 14 at 0:17