Thanks for your response – but – per my post- I have already tried disabling cron and setting up a nightly cron job. That works just finr and is not the problem.
The problem is – as previously stated – with wp-cron.php disabled and wp-cron.php running nightly for the site- the wordfence plugin (free version) stops emailing me if a plugin needs updating or if it is abandoned, etc.
This is a wordfence problem not a wp-cron.php issue
Thanks
Audrey