WF and TJ have just recognized a good chunk of the population will respond to the flattery of their moral vanity.

Having said that: that’s a pretty good health plan. I haven’t seen a health plan that good in several jobs. Starbucks partners get a pretty good health plan, too. Just sayin’.

Re: a low water crop that might work in Texas drought country. I have been experimenting with quinoa, which is an Incan staple grain grown at even higher altitudes than here [10,000+ feet] in the Andes. Extremely high in protein, and complete proteins. It is a desert type plant [bloody little water down there]. It grows in Colorado and there are small farms of it down by Trinidad [around 6000 feet] according to our extension service. San Antonio is around 700 feet [and I do love that Riverwalk. There used to be a Cajun restaurant with blackened prime rib to die for.]so I don’t know if it will grow at that altitude. However, when the local health food store heard that I was going to try to grow it [and we do organic], they offered to buy my crop before it was even planted. It is a fast germinating [3 days], low water crop and we got [miribile dictu] 2 1/2 inches of rain days after I planted which wiped it out. This has been our wettest summer in decades. But I will try again next year. Have your uncle do a web search on the grain, and see what his county extension office says about it. It is a possibility.

Another thought for your cousin. Given the nanny state taxes that have hit and are still coming; it might be worthwhile to try growing an acre of tobacco. Not for commercial sale, which would involve government regulation; but for “personal use” which is unregulated still. The barter possibilities are interesting. I know tobacco grows in Virginia and hte Carolinas. Not sure if Maryland is suitable for small scale. He would have access to seed in that area.

#140 Charles

That’s nasty mushroom country. I hope you and yours are visiting your country cousins when we receive the inevitable, unopposed gift from Iran, Al Quada, Russia; et.al.

Subotai Bahadur

The work of William Sloane Coffin at Yale has born fruit. Parasites always are surprised and angered when the host collapses beneath them.
…….
I fear the church I currently attend will die of the same disease that Coffin rendered.

I wasn’t actually asking on my own behalf. I was asking on behalf of another of my cousins who has five acres in Howard County (Next door to PG county.)

I’ll pass yours and other suggestions on to him.

I live inside the beltway of washington dc on the virginia side.

That’s way too far out of my climate zone (south Texas) to know about what grows there. Can you grow artichokes there?

133. Tcobb:
I went to my cousin’s wedding reception in San Antonio in early July. Nice evening setting in a downtown hotel. Cool air conditioning. If you cared to step outside it was hot and humid but the little river ran by. I talked to the only texas republican elected official who didn’t vote for George Bush in 2000(because he said the way Bush got better test scores was the same way ann richards did…dumb down the tests.) Afterwards I went out with my uncle to visit a piece of land he uses for an airport with frontage on Guadalupe River near
Seguin. That’s my guess anyhow as I’m not familiar with that area. We passed through miles and miles of burnt up corn fields. A couple seasons of that could just wipe out the farmers–unless someone shows them how to grow something that doesn’t need much water–and isn’t mesquite.

Do you know of such a plant?