Blogger unfrozen

I think the blog is back and running now. I had the day off today (Friday) but I found that I couldn't log on to this old familiar friend this morning. But the problem seems to have gone away and hopefully we will see no more technical difficulties for a while.

Meanwhile, checkout the National Fruit and Vegetable Retail Report here. From the Aug. 1 report:

Retailers Embrace, Highlight Local Produce
Retailers continued to entice customers with bountiful summer produce and many distinguished locally grown products in ads. Some even described the farm and published pictures of local growers. Throughout the store, retailers were using a variety of promotional tactics to attract business. These included “buy-one-get-one-free”, “buy-one-get-two-free”, 5 for $5, 10 for $10, double coupons, and rewards for gas and extra savings. There were also some scattered back-to-school features noted. Overall, fresh produce ad activity increased more than 10% this week and was a combination of increases of 8% in fruits and nearly 14% in vegetables. Fruits once again this week made up the top 5 featured items: peaches, grapes, nectarines, cherries, and cantaloupes. Stone fruits and melons were the most often featured fruits. Zucchini, tomatoes,green peppers and corn were the most often featured vegetables.In addition to the items reported, many other seasonal items were noted in features. These included: a variety of melons,kiwi, figs, white flesh peaches and nectarines, many fresh herbs, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, yellow squash, and green onions.