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Organic
News
and
Commentary
From Maine
Saturday,
December 8th, 2018
Volume
27 Issue 23
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In This
Issue of The Wood
Prairie Seed
Piece:
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A Year of Records.
That Season Which Shifts to the
Indoors.
Though
farmers would have plenty to do outside year-round, this time of year
it’s good to have inside work. We use these months to
pre-grade
our potato crop which really helps us become prepared for the tsunami of shipped-out orders
coinciding with the Spring’s northward march beginning in February.
After experiencing the record hottest meteorological
Summer
(June/July/August) on record in northern Maine - along with dry weather
- the pendulum shifted quickly in the second half of September with
cold and then wet weather. Winter set in early with
our
first 4” snowfall on October 24. Since then we’ve had another six
storms and an additional 26” of
snow.
As proof of Winter’s
early arrival this year, with consistency we’ve witnessed the three primary metrics of Maine
winter: cold, snowfall and snow depth.
Our pattern of near record cold in October and November, combined with
unusual significant early snow continues here that it's now
December.
Astonishing
departure from historical norms is what the new National
Climate
Assessment report (see final article in this issue of the Wood Prairie
Seed Piece)
cautions us will become the earth’s new norm. Climate
scientists
explain that the weather extremities experienced by farmers over the
past 15 years are the prelude to further tough
times. We’re
told there’s time to partially mitigate the costly climate trouble
ahead, but
it means coming together and acting with resolve now and in
the next dozen years.
We believe the interests of
the world’s children and grand childrenare worth the effort.
What are we waiting for?
. 
Caleb,
Jim
&
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood Prairie Family Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
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Wood Prairie
Catalog. Soon to be in your mailbox but our FLIP CATALOG
is now available on our website. |
New Wood Prairie Catalog Headed
Your Way.
The brand new Winter 2019
Catalog is making its way to your
mailbox! This catalog includes new items like
Maine’s new Organic
Caribou Potato, Organic
Golden Acre Cabbage and new Organic
Wood Prairie T-Shirts.
What’s more, you’ll find many cases where we’ve succeeded in lowering
prices. That means our legendary high-performing Certified
Organic seed is now more affordable than ever!
But you don’t have to wait for your paper copy! You may go –
right now! - to our website and view
the electronic Flip version of this
same new catalog.
Regardless of
whether you wait for the paper catalog, use the electronic Flip
Catalog, or order
TODAY from our website you’ll see the same great
products and the great low pricing that will save you money!
Caleb & Jim
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Special Offer:
FREE Organic Adirondack Blue Certified Seed Potatoes!
One of
the most stunning and beautiful potatoes released is recent years is Organic
Adirondack Blue. Along with
sister, Organic
Adirondack Red,
both are introductions “traditionally bred” (NOT genetically
engineered) by the talented potato breeders at New York’s Cornel
University.
Organic Adirondack Blue
has breathtaking, brilliant, totally-blue flesh covered by a dark blue
skin. Tubers siize up Mid-Season,
substantially
earlier than famous Late-Season heirloom, Organic
All-Blue.
Organic Adirondack Blue yields are strong and reliable. In
the
kitchen, Organic Adirondack Blue provides good taste and great novelty,
allowing one to prepare fun purple potato salad or luscious lavender
mashed potatoes.
Enjoy
growing this wonderful crop in next year’s garden and it will be on
us! Earn a FREE 1 Lb. Sack of Organic Adirondack
Blue Certified Seed Potatoes (Value $11.95) when your next
order totals $49 or more. FREE Organic Adirondack
Blue Certified Seed Potatoes Offer ends 11:59 PM on Monday
December 10. Please use Promo
Code WPFF440.
Your order and FREE
Sack of
Organic Adirondack Blue Certified Seed Potatoes must ship
no later than May 5, 2019. Offer may not be combined with other
offers. Please place your order TODAY!
Click
Here for our Organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes.
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Organic
Adirondack Blue. Reliable and beautiful blue potato from
Cornell.
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Wood Prairie Family Farm Photos.
Putting Up a Pallet of Tablestock
Organic Adirondack Blue Family Style.
Here
in our 38ºF underground potato cellar, the four of us sort and
box up a pallet’s worth of tablestock (eating or “ware”
potatoes) Organic Adirondack Blue “Tops” (large potatoes), leaving
the “Strip” (small potatoes) behind to be sold through the
Winter
and Spring as Certified Seed potatoes. Caleb (blue
sweatshirt)
pours cartons of pre-sized and graded Tops onto the “wide nylon
brusher” which buffs the potatoes, leaving the tubers clean and
protected by a thin patina of soil. Megan G. (with hood up)
helps
pull out the last of the Strip tubers. Jim (red vest) sits
and
runs the foot-operated “Single Bagger” conveyor while inspecting tubers
as they fill the carton Bottoms. Megan S. uses
special 2”
tape (extra strong and sticky grip for moist cellar conditions) to seal
up crisp 50-pound “Count Bottom” cartons. Once weighed out, a
printed white “Count Top” is slid down over the full Bottom and then
the carton is stacked on the pallet, seven cartons per layer.
A
full-pallet is seven layers high plus one on top to make a 2500-pound
standard pallet of potatoes.
November Sunset on Wood Prairie Family
Farm. This
time of year it gets dark by 4pm. Head high piles of snow
have
been plowed up by Caleb and his snowplow. The yard is plowed
and
kept free of snow throughout the winter so that on a daily basis trucks
can come in, load up, turn around and get back out.
Hardworking Wood Prairie Cats Catching a
Few Winks. Cooper
(left) and Chub strategically position themselves on an unused and soft
office chair right near the heater. Despite appearances to
the
contrary, farm cats perform the essential duty of patrolling barns and
sheds, keeping mice and voles under control. These boys earn
their keep.
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Hard Times
Ahead. Remedial actions in the next dozen years can keep
our climate dillemma to "manageable" levels. |
New National Climate Assessment
Makes Clear We Have A Harshly Different World Ahead.
The recently released landmark
1600-page National
Climate Assessment
"represents cumulative decades of work from more than 300
authors." The report paints a bleak and
economically costly
picture, including rising sea levels, increasingly variable and extreme
weather patterns, droughts, floods, forest fires and crop failures.
Thankfully, the National
Climate Assessment indicates there is time for response
and therefore hope. The world has a dozen years
to take decisive action which would lessen and make "manageable" the
otherwise towering troubles now being lined up for our children and
grandchildren.
Agriculture can help. Thirty percent of
excessive atmospheric carbon comes from agriculture. By adopting
traditional organic practices - including cover cropping and sod
rotations - farmers can sequester harmful excess carbon from the
atmosphere and put in back into the soil as organic matter where it
belongs.
There was valuable
coverage of the National
Climate Assessment in the New
York Times. Additionally, the Atlantic
offered good insight, including some excerpts below.
Caleb & Jim
On
Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, the federal government
published a massive and dire new report on climate change.
The
report warns, repeatedly and directly, that climate change could soon
imperil the American way of life, transforming every region of the
country, imposing frustrating costs on the economy, and harming the
health of virtually every citizen.
...
the National Climate Assessment—which is endorsed by NASA, NOAA, the
Department of Defense, and 10 other federal scientific agencies...Many
consequences of climate change will last for millennia, and some (such
as the extinction of plant and animal species) will be permanent...
The
report is blunt: Climate change is happening now, and humans are
causing it. 'Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point
in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human
activities,' declares its first sentence. 'The assumption that current
and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no
longer valid'...
Its
projections of sea-level rise are just as ominous. If carbon pollution
continues to rise, a huge swath of the Atlantic coast—from North
Carolina to Maine—will see sea-level rise of five feet by 2100. New
Orleans, Houston, and the Gulf Coast could also face five feet of
rising seas. Even Los Angeles and San Francisco could see the Pacific
Ocean rise by three feet...
'If
the United States were to try and achieve the targets in the Paris
Agreement, then things will be bad, but we can manage,' he said. 'But
if we don’t meet them, then we’re talking about hundreds of thousands
of lives every year that are at risk because of climate change. And
hundreds of billions of dollars'...
'It’s
not that we care about a 1-degree increase in global temperature in the
abstract,' she said. 'We care about water, we care about food, we care
about the economy—and every single one of those things is being
affected by climate change today.'
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Booker T. Washington on Reality.
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Recipe:
Maine Potato Patties.
Ingredients:
2 lightly beaten eggs
2 tablespoons chopped onion
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups mashed potatoes
2 cups turkey, chopped
2 cups stuffing
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Directions:
In a large bowl, whisk together the
eggs, onion and pepper. Gently mix in the potatoes, turkey and stuffing.
In a large skillet, heat butter and oil over medium. Drop potato
mixture by ½ cup into pan and press down slightly.
Cook 4 to 5 minutes each side, until
heated through and golden brown.
Drain on paper towels and serve. Great
brunch dish!
Makes 10 to 12 patties
-Megan
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Maine Potato
Patties.
Photo
by Angela Wotton
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Mailbox:
Wyoming Harvest & Katahdins..
Wyoming Potato
Harvest.
Your news article on picking potatoes reminded me
of
picking potatoes in Johnson County Wyoming for Harold Madsen and John
Kumor nearly 70 years ago. It was after the war, my Mother and Aunt
would pick during the week and kids could join on the week-ends. We
drug big sacks behind us attached at the waist. The money was
wonderful, but best of all were the harvest dinners served at both
farms that were better than a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. I think
we looked forward to it more than the money. The women enjoyed the days
away from home and the cash and of course potatoes for the winter.
Women in those days didn't need to go to exercise class they were
strong and fit from working hard every day. We kids learned a lot fromj
the big variety of workers who showed up to pick potatoes and listening
to all their stories.
JP
Buffalo, WY
Thanks for taking the time to
share your potato story with us.
Megan.
Katahdins NOT GMO.
Are
Katahdins non-GMO?
KJ
WWW
Katahdin is an heirloom Maine potato variety that
was
released in 1932 and is absolutely NON-GMO. Only a handful of potato
varieties (sometimes vaguely marketed as "Innate" or "White Russets") are
GMO. However, because of the on-going failure to require mandatory GMO
Labeling, confusion is certainly growing. Buying Certified Organic
Potatoes is the easiest and best way to AVOID ALL GMO Potatoes, since
genetic engineering is an absolutely clear "prohibited method" under
Federal NOP organic farming regulations.
Jim
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Wood Prairie Farm Quick
Links
Caleb & Jim
& Megan Gerritsen
Wood
Prairie Family Farm
49
Kinney Road
Bridgewater,
Maine 04735
(207)
429 - 9765
Certified Organic, From Farm to Mailbox
www.woodprairie.com
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