Spring Rush is Here.

Bridgewater, Maine (Pop. 532), Home of Wood Prairie Family Farm. (Click on Image to Enlarge).

       This beautiful bird’s-eye view was a shot taken by talented local photographer Paul Cyr in mid-October 2015. It is a rare vantage gained by the use of his trademark powered-parachute craft. The view is looking westward over the western portion of the Town of Bridgewater. The highway in the foreground, running left to right (south to north) and bisecting downtown Bridgewater is US Route 1 which extends from Fort Kent, Maine (north of us) down to Key West, Florida. The fields you see are typically well-drained Potato fields, either recently harvested or in sod rotation. The fields are surrounded by mostly less-well-drained woods. The arrow-straight road heading west is “Bootfoot Road” (aka “West Road”). Bootfoot extends out three miles from Route 1. Wood Prairie Family Farm is pretty much hidden by forest. However, if you look left (south) from the very west end of Bootfoot a quarter mile or so, you may be able to discern a slight gap in the trees. Those are fields of our farm which we have been farming organically now for almost 50 years. To the west beyond us, are the millions of acres of forestland known as the North Maine Woods.

     This new issue of our Wood Prairie Seed Piece features a new ‘Maine Tales’ entitled Coming to Conclusions. It also includes Farm Photos and their stories from this week on our Maine farm. We share Megan’s fine Recipe for Lemon Potatoes and encourage you to take advantage of our Offer for FREE Organic Vegetable Seeds. Plus, towards the end of the issue, you’ll find a reassuring Notable Quote from Thomas Paine.

     Scroll down to our How-To Garden Resources section and find a link to a brand new ‘You Tube’ video interview with Jim about How-To- Grow Organic Seed Potatoes at Home, conducted by Master Gardener Jessica McCollum of ‘From Dream to Seed’ in Indiana.

     By now you know you can rely on us for all your Organic needs, including Organic Seed Potatoes, Organic Sweet Potato Slips, Organic Vegetable Seed, Organic Herb Seed, Organic Flower Seed, Organic Cover Crop Seed, Organic Fertilizer, and Tools and Supplies.

We're now at peak shipping and have a turn around time of 3-5 days on new orders.

Thanks for your support of our Maine Organic family farm!

Stay Safe & Stay Warm!

Bridgewater, Maine

 

     Farmer understanding mostly comes from experience. And worthwhile experience doesn’t just land bundled up in your lap. The road towards experience has to start somewhere and it’s a long one.

       Humans have become pretty good at discerning patterns based on observation and experience. But only in hindsight does it become clear whether enough observational data points have been collected for a conclusion to fly and stand the test of time.

     One Climate Change scientist with an Ag background and perspective has cautioned cause for concern lies ahead. One farmer lifetime contains sixty crops, more or less. Farmers draw from their experience of weather anomalies which have confronted past crops in order to chart their course of action for another year with an out-of-the-ordinary weather variation. This researcher predicts that Climate-Change-driven weather anomalies will become so extreme that they will at some point exceed the capacity of accumulated farmer-lifetime experiential know-how.

Snow Country

      Now, a place like the State of Maine has a long history of getting a lot of snow. Since life needs to carry on in the Winter, as near normal as possible, that snow must get moved out of the way so cars and trucks and people can get from here to there.

      After a snowstorm deposits new snow, snow plows attached to trucks tackle the job of pushing snow far off into piles on the edges of roads, driveways and yards. Here on Wood Prairie Family Farm it takes us about six hours of work to open things back up after a half-foot snowfall. Since Northern Maine normally receives 100-120 inches of snow each Winter, simple math will corroborate that Mainers spend a whole lot of time moving snow. During stretches when we get two or three snowstorms per week, snowplowing is like having a second job.

Potatoes Interrupted

      The first half of March is when we will have accumulated our deepest snowpack. The snows keep coming and the temperatures continue to remain enough below freezing that not much melting ever takes place.

     There was one March when our oldest boy, Peter, was a little over three-years-old. Over the duration of that Winter, Peter would sit by the window and watch his father plow snow over-and-over with an old angled eight-foot-wide snowplow attached to an old no-cab Oliver gas tractor with tire chains.

     Of course, there were Potatoes to grade. All Winter-long, with Peter near at hand we’d grade Seed Potatoes, bag them up and and ship them out to distant places already experiencing Spring. While we worked, we discussed and conjured up plans about what crops we’d be planting in the Spring. Invariably, Potato work would get interrupted by yet another snowstorm. After we plowed that snowfall away we’d switch back to shipping out Potatoes.

Thoughts of Spring

Caleb, Jim & Megan

The Year’s First Wood Prairie Calf Getting a Warm Up Drink Inside the House. Like all authentic organic farms, our cows - Low-Line Angus crossed with Irish Dexters - have ready access to the out-of-doors. So this week when new mother 'Penelope' opted to give birth, it happened to take place outside on the snow, instead of inside the barn in the dry-bedded loafing area. By design, we keep a small herd of grass-efficient cows who consider eating our Organic Potato culls a real treat. Throughout the Winter they have the freedom to come and go as they please, choosing to either be inside or outside the dry barn. This new heifer calf had become chilled, so Megan brought her inside the house to warm up. Then, hand-milking out some colostrum from Penelope, she transfered it into a calf-bottle and successfully got the two-hour-old calf to drink. After one night’s lodging in the house, the calf has since rejoined her mother in the barn. She has figured out how to nurse on her own and is doing well.

  Three Wood Prairie Dogs Out for a Walk. With the long shadows of a sunny late afternoon this week, Wood Prairie dogs and humans enjoy a late Winter walk. In the foreground is sweet Rottweiler ‘Ralph.’ He and high-energy yearling ‘Rudi,’ the dark brindle Cane Corso on the right, belong to Caleb and Lizzi. ‘Halle’ is the farm’s gentle middle-aged Great Pyrenees. We’re all walking on our snowplowed road between the frozen ‘Big’ Pond’ and ‘Small’ Pond. Our snow depth is now about 30 inches except where it’s drifted deeper. That 30’ x 70’ Quonset hut in the upper right is Caleb’s repair shop. In Maine a lot of vehicles get parked in the Fall and are rested for the duration of Winter in order to keep them free from the corrosive effects of ice-melting road salt. Included in this hibernating group is Caleb’s classic red & white Ford F350 crew-cab pickup truck with a 7.3 Liter Diesel engine. Ten years ago after graduating from the local Community College with a degree in ‘Diesel Hydraulics’ Caleb rebuilt this truck from scratch, from bumper to bumper. That prized and Winter-rested truck has only learned about Maine Winters by reading about it in Yankee Magazine.