Wood
Prairie Harvest Winding Down. The
completion of
harvest represents quite a
milestone. As of a couple of days ago
our potatoes are all safely out of the ground and into
storage.
So are the beets and parsnips. We’ve begun digging
our Chantenay carrots
and they are our last crop yet to harvest.
But for now we’re being held up from harvest by the heavy
rain of the
Nor’easter bearing down upon Maine.
Last night, working late a couple of hours into the darkness, our son
Caleb was able to finish preparing our potato ground for winter by
chisel
plowing and broadcasting a cover crop of oats. We’re grateful
for headlights.
The rain and wind
have blown most of the remaining colorful leaves off the trees and onto
the
ground and with the gray skies it is looking like late
October.
The crops look good and we’re busy catching
up on shipping your orders. The
culmination of our year’s work is at hand and we are grateful
for a good
harvest. We are also grateful for your business which allows us to farm
and do
what we love. Thank you.
Jim & Megan
Recipe: Baked Parsnip
Chips.
2 large Frost Sweet Parsnips
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice Parsnips a little over
1/8” thick. Drizzle with 2 Tablespoons oil or
butter and
spread out on a cookie sheet.
Season
with sea salt or garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper or your
favorite
seasonings. Bake until golden brown on
the edges, a little crispy. Serve as an
appetizer with dip or as a side dish.
Special
Offer: FREE Fresh Organic
Frost Sweet
Parsnips.
We’ll have plenty of parsnips
for you this winter! We’d like
to celebrate the successful harvest of this year’s wonderful
parsnip crop. And we’d like to share that harvest
with you
with a great offer. Receive a FREE 5
lbs bag ($18.95 value) bag of our fresh Frost Sweet organic parsnips
with your
next purchase of $65 or more.
Please use promo
code XXXXX. Order must ship by
12/08/10. FREE Parsnip offer expires
10/15/10 and can not be combined with other offers. Please
call or click today!
Megan
Fortunes
Turn
Against Monsanto.
As
recently as last December Forbes magazine blundered and named biotech
giant Monsanto its "company of the year." But there is change in the
wind. Monsanto's stock has plummeted from a mid-2008 high of $140 a
share to a recent price of under $48 a share. And now earlier
this month when Monsanto's prospects were characterized by a television
stock
commentator as "This may be the worst stock of 2010". Has greed caught
up with Monsanto? Read the full NY Times
story by clicking
here
Question
and Answer : Growing
Potatoes Off-Season. Q.
I live in Concord California and we usually have mild and
damp
winter weather. Can you recommend a seed potato for me to gow out here?
We usually plant the potatoes in the Fall because our Springs can go to
hot very quickly. I've tried some of your potatoes in the past
following your instructions and the plants come up looking very healthy
but, then when they die down any potatoes I find are about the size of
a quarter. I was wondering if you could tell me what, if anything, I'm
doing incorrectly. Or if you could recommend a potato that might do
well in my part of the country. Thank you. AP Concord, CA
A.
First, Spring or Fall I'd suggest you plant short season
varieties that grow and mature as quickly as possible. Caribe', Reddale
and Onaway are varieties that immediately come to mind, early and high
yielding.
When planting in the Spring I'd say plant as early as
possible
say early February in your area, to allow the tubers to size before the
hot weather takes its toll on the plants. One fact to keep in mind
about Fall planting is that potatoes once harvested tubers need to go
through a dormancy period of 4-8 weeks before they will sprout. So
potatoes which we are now harvesting on a daily basis - and soon to
ship out - will need that rest period.
Here 's one good trick to employ if you want to plant an
early
Fall crop. Take a portion of your Spring crop harvest - dug in May or
June - and place it in your refrigerator for a few months while the
tubers rest. Then two weeks before your Fall planting date remove and
place tubers in a warm room to promote sprouting. Plant once there is a
sprout growth in the eye - this indicates the tubers have broken
dormancy and are ready to grow in the garden. If you buy fresh
certified seed for each Spring crop you will never be more than one
generation away from clean certified seed and your potatoes should grow
well.
Scrambled
Eggs. View Cornicopia's video
on Scrambled
Eggs Factory
Farms
Hijacking Organic Egg Production. Our friends at The
Cornucopia Institute
have dug deep and in a brand new independent report have uncovered
widespread abuses in organic egg production, primarily by large
industrial agribiz operations. Watch the five minute You Tube video
which introduces their excellent report entitled "Scrambled Eggs." For
the report itself click here.
But don't worry - there are excellent
"Five Egg"
rated ethical bona fide organic egg operations across the USA that need
and deserve your support and they are listed on Cornucopia's Organic
Egg Scorecard. Click
here for
the scorecard.
And please consider becoming a member
of Cornucopia
(www.cornucopia.org)
and support their
fearless work to defend organic.
Jim
Jim
& Megan Gerritsen Wood
Prairie Farm 49
Kinney Road Bridgewater,
Maine 04735 (800)829-9765
Certified Organic, Direct from the Farm www.woodprairie.com
