Bio
Hello! After a couple of years of benefiting from using this forum, I was amused this morning when I discovered the purpose of this thread! Sometimes what’s most obvious is the least noticed! Some very interesting bios here!
I grew up on a cotton farm in west Tennessee where as I studied agriculture in high school I began to learn about caring for fruit trees. So I got permission to manage our family orchard. This was my first real interest in growing fruit. Back then the wild plum thickets (Prunus Americana) covered almost every space that farmers were not plowing up for crop land, but as time passed we began to notice how these prized treats were gradually disappearing. Now as I reflect back on those very simple times, I realize how fortunate I was to be growing up in a rural environment where I was free to roam and learn. I eventually graduated from high school and had to leave my passion to attend the military academy at West Point where I majored in civil engineering. During my career I managed to obtain my MS in Civil Engineering. But during my 20 year military career I really was never in one place long enough to have fruit or gardens, or even plant a tree, but I always thought someday I will! I retired from service in 1992 and took my first civilian job here in Washington State as City Engineer for the City of Auburn. Finally, I was able to settle down long enough to plant a tree! Often have I wondered why I had not pursued horticulture instead of engineering. I retired from my city job a few years ago and now have the honor and pleasure of working for myself! Two years ago I somehow stumbled onto this site as I was trying to learn more about plant propagation and grafting. 
! It was for me like a eureka moment when I discovered so many people willing to teach me all I didn’t know! My primary interests now are expanding my knowledge about plants, grafting, adding new fruit and plant varieties to our garden, outdoors sports: hiking, fishing and skiing, and during my spare time I enjoy trading in the stock market. As I have developed my own investment strategies, I often help others learn how to make money. While working with the city I led a small investors group to help others learn about stock investing. Now that I am retired and with the advent of Covid I no longer meet with other investors in small groups, but I do still send out my weekly market update to those who wish to receive my emails. I have been a subscriber in Investors Business Daily for over 10 years now and rely on it for the majority of my stock research. So if you would like to learn more about the market and often consult on investment strategies, just PM me your email and I will add you to my weekly update!
Dennis Dowdy
Kent, Wa
Welcome! We are happy to have you on the forum! We, in fact, have a thread on investing that I am sure would love to hear your perspectives.
Hello from Central Oklahoma! I’ve been a long-time reader for a few years now, but haven’t posted anything. My yard is pretty small, but I’ve managed to add cornelian cherries, one pawpaw, a jujube, four figs, elderberries, a pomegranate, Warren pear, Mexican plum, serviceberry, blueberries, and a muscadine. I had a couple Asian persimmons, too, but they died in the crazy February freeze this year.
I’ve learned so much from this site. Many thanks to Scott and the admins! 
I’m a newbie (but intrepidly so). I live in a suburb in New England.
Welcome aboard a fellow New Englander!
This is an introduction thread (which is very long to begin with).
If you don’t mind, could you please copy your questions and create a new thread in the General Fruit Growing category?. I am certain you will get a lot of responses.
Welcome to the forum, you are in good company! Plenty of our members are scattered around New England. You may want to check out this thread No spray fruits
It has been active recently and will give you a good baseline.
Similar story here. Bachelor and Masters in Mechanical Engineering. Grafted my first tree last year.
I just love it. I’ll hang up the power plant manager career before too long and focus on being a gentleman farmer.
Hello All, first of all a bundle of thanks for creating this wonderful place for like minded people. I feel like I just got home and have been ferociously absorbing all I can from the forum. Thanks to all.
About me: I will call myself a hobby/Gentleman farmer. I have a busy day job but I love all things related to farming. About 5 years ago bought a piece of Kentucky and started planting fruit trees. Finally moved out of subdivision and have been living on the farm for the past 3 years.
Currently have about an acre of electric fenced area with over 100 fruit trees of all that goes in zone 6B/7A including Apples, Pear, Peaches, Plum, Apricot, Nectarines, Cherry, Persimmons, Jujube, Paw Paw, Mulberry etc. Figs deserve a separate paragraph 
Peach, PawPaw, Mulberry, jujube, Persimmons have fruited and hopefully others will fruit in the years to come.
Figs: I got tired of shuffling figs in pots to garage and basement in winters and decided to go all in with in ground figs and after devouring all the info from our fig forum decided to trellis the figs on low cordon Japanese style espalier protected with Low tunnels during winters and have a relatively good success with first great season in 2021.
Berries: Haskap, Raspberries, Blackberries, Currants.
Nuts: We have Black walnut and hickory nuts as native trees. Plan for lots of nut planting this year including chestnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pecans etc.
Vegetables: in High Tunnel and raised beds were the first to start.
Livestock: We have chickens, goats, a guard dog, cat and two colonies of bees.
Requesting prayers and pointers from you all. I’m counting my blessings and wishing all a blessed, productive and fruitful year.
Welcome to the forum it looks like you have a great farm! As questions pop up just post them and one of us will try and answer them for you. Looking forward to seeing your future posts especially those about honeybees and high tunnels!
That could be Bourbon County…but at least in the Bluegrass. Kentucky is
reprsented pretty good on here. Lovely young orchard!
Beautiful figs- I am considering that setup myself, so will watch if you post more about it.
Beautiful, what is your favorite fig so far?
You have a great looking farm, and a headstart on many of the members here. Welcome! Cannot wait to see your fruits in the spring-summer!
Yes, Bourbon is the neighboring county. Good to see fellow kentucky folks. Thanks for the compliment. Stay safe during this weather 
Favorite fig is the one at peak ripeness picked from plant. With that said dark figs are my favorite. Dark Portuguese and Makedonia Dark are on top. In green varieties Kadota and Brooklyn white are awsome,
Great looking orchard and farm AnjeerFarmer! Welcome to our community…
Hi, my name is Mark and I live in the Portland, OR area.
I joined a couple of weeks ago but I just noticed the “Introduce myself” topic.
We moved here in 2013 and this is our third coast (TX, CT, OR).
First thing I did here is put in a couple of raised beds to grow tomatoes and planted beefsteaks 
- at the end of the season I had frozen green tomatoes 
- this is definitely not TX. I have had better luck with cherry tomatoes but still not great. Surveying what we have that gets lots of light, I noticed our Flowering Plum 
- this Spring I want to graft in some fruit branches 
and found this forum.
Quick funny story from just after getting married 
:
I have always remembered my family having a garden so when we moved into our first house in TX, I set to making garden beds 
- tilling and preparing the soil, weeding, etc. and my wife started grumbling
Me: 
But I thought you liked gardening
Wife: I do
Me: 
What is your definition of “gardening”?
Wife: 
Planting flowers and watching them grow
Me: 
That is a very distorted view of gardening.
I should probably say “hello”!
Hi! I’m Andrew and I’m based in the central/eastern part of Iowa (5a/5b-ish). I’m still relatively new to growing fruits so I’ve been listening and reading significantly more than posting.
We have a house in new development in a suburban area but with a fair amount of ground given the circumstance (.3 acre). We were planting shade trees, and my wife spent months convincing me to get a Cherry tree. So, we finally did. She sold me on fresh jams, jellies, pies, etc. So, 4 years ago we bought one from a local nursery, planted it, and killed it within 2 weeks. Thought it was a bad spot in the yard. Next year, we bought another, killed it within 3 weeks (or so we thought). It tried to come back in the fall, but it soon died for good this time. This was unusual because we’ve planted plenty of shade trees and never had problems.
Ended up doing a significant amount of reading online and learned how cherry trees don’t particularly like water. Changed how and where we planted it, and year 3, we got one to survive - which was especially impressive to us considering right after we planted it the temperatures went into the mid 90’s (unusual for the area at that time), it got ravaged by Japanese beetles, and it got assaulted by ~120mph straight-line winds.
It came back and produced cherries in 2021. From there, I went ‘all-in’ to growing fruit. Everything is still very young, but we have 3 apples, 4 euro pears, 2 sour cherry, 2 sweet cherry (not expecting much), 2 raspberry, 5 blueberry, and 1 blackberry. Looking forward to planting honeyberries, currants, an apricot, asian pear, 2 more apples, a peach, a multi-graft plum, and trying out some grafting on the current apple and pear trees in 2022.
This forum is an outstanding resource and a special and a huge thanks to all who created and are maintaining it!
You’ve gotten your feet wet it looks like…
Hopefully you found some good spots in the yard to plant…but if the soil or drainage is too bad…raised beds solve the problem. (And raised beds don’t have to be enclosed in edging, stones, or anything… a mound of good dirt is also a raised bed.)
Good luck in '22.