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HAVE YOU BEEN IMPACTED BY THIS YEAR’S HAYING WOES IN THE STATE OF MAINE? Maine isn’t the only place which has been rece


HAVE YOU BEEN IMPACTED BY THIS YEAR’S HAYING WOES IN THE STATE OF MAINE? Maine isn’t the only place which has been receiving excessive rains this Summer, but our soggy season may be able to illustrate the problem other farmers other places may be having.

The first three weeks of May started out dry. But the pattern shifted on May 21 and since then our Northern Maine farm has recorded over 21″ of rain. For perspective, 14″ of water is needed to grow Potatoes. Back in the once-in-a-generation drought year of 2020, we received a total 5.65″ rainfall from June 1 – Sept 30 (then, another 6.52″ of rain fell in October, after the Potato crop was put away in storage).

With all the rain in Maine this Summer, it’s been hard to make hay. Therefore, good dry hay is in short supply statewide. Most Maine dairy farmers have the equipment and capacity to make “Haylage” (pickled moist hay, usually made in “Big Round” bales wrapped in white plastic skins) so they have a portion of their cow’s Winter diets secured. But EVERY livestock farmer uses mostly – if not all – dry hay for dairy AND beef cows, horses, sheep and goats.

We got a rare and late window to mow our first-cut hay in early August. Then late the very next afternoon the cut grass had dried and was ready to bale into hay. Unfortunately, from the git go the baler took to acting up. After it had crudely baled a dozen 800# Big Round bales – about a third of the field – the baler gave up the ghost entirely.

Caleb and Justin then used the harpoon on our New Holland Skidsteer (see back end of trailer) to load the modest harvest of hay bales onto our Ford 9000 with its step-deck trailer. Before dark they got the hay bales unloaded and safely stored inside our tarp barn.

The next day it rained 0.70.” Then, the day after that it rained another 0.85.” Fortunately, in our case, we have plenty of hay leftover from last year. Therefore, we had the luxury of calling it quits for Wood Prairie haying for this year. The first of the following week we used a hay ted to un-windrow the hay prepped for baling and left it to rot and feed the soil.

However, most Maine livestock farmers remain in a predicament not of their own making. A wet Summer like this is not unknown, but has not been experienced here in Maine for quite a few years.

Maine Potato farmers and haymakers alike could use a 4-5 week drought beginning right about now.

What’s it like where you are? Caleb, Megan & Jim




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WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PICKED ROCKS ON A FARM? This photo, which Jim took 12 years ago, was borrowed and shared on


WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PICKED ROCKS ON A FARM? This photo, which Jim took 12 years ago, was borrowed and shared on a private FB group “The County–Good ‘Ol’ Potato/tater Pickers of Aroostook”(because it is a private group it could not be shared so sadly the many Comments are not visible).
We have a four-year crop rotation. So we grow Potatoes in a given field once every 4 years. We build up the soil with sod crops for the other 3 of the 4 years. This 4-year-pattern allows us to keep perfect track of years and fields, going back over 30 years.
This is our “Seed Field #8” and we have Organic Potatoes growing here this year. Driving the Oliver 1650 Diesel tractor is Caleb’s sister, Sarah, then age 13. Caleb’s other sister, Amy, age 8, is in the pink sweatshirt beside the tractor tire.
Megan’s current right-hand-woman, Chelsea, is crouched in the green T-shirt and paying homage to the Rock Gods. Out of sight are Chelsea’s future husband (met in a Potato field!) – and Caleb’s right-hand-man – Justin. Caleb, also out-of-view is picking rocks next to Justin.
As Organic farmers we’re always the oddballs. We pick our rocks only from 7am-noon. We always change over to another farm activity after dinner. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and picking rocks on a hot afternoon does have the tendency of eroding good attitudes.
Caleb, Megan & Jim




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MEGAN’S KITCHEN RECIPES: “Aroostook Potato Salad.” This Recipe is a Mashed-Style Potato Salad, beloved here in Aro

MEGAN’S KITCHEN RECIPES: “Aroostook Potato Salad.”

This Recipe is a Mashed-Style Potato Salad, beloved here in Aroostook County, Maine. If your Potato Salad preference is Chunk-Style, you’ll get the best results by using stored Potatoes in which the starches are more matured.
What kind of Potato Salad is your favorite? Megan

4-6 med Yukon Gold potatoes
1 small onion, diced
2 hard boiled eggs
1 to 1 1/4 c mayonnaise
Salt and pepper

Boil potatoes until tender. Drain and mash. Add diced onion, pinch of salt and pepper and mix. Remove egg yolks from white and dice the egg white. Mix egg white in the potatoes with up to 1 cup of mayonnaise. Stir until combined. Transfer to medium casserole dish and pat smooth. Spread remaining mayonnaise and crumble egg yolk evenly over top.

Serves 4-6 as a side dish




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MAINE TALES. “Protection From Ravage and Ruin.” Bridgewater, Maine. Circa 2006. Simultaneously, I experienced a di


MAINE TALES. “Protection From Ravage and Ruin.” Bridgewater, Maine. Circa 2006.

Simultaneously, I experienced a dizzying, sinking feeling of impending doom, and yet also a perverse thrill at the fortuitous timing which allowed us to witness a hailstorm assault on our Potato crop.

Thankfully, hail is a rare occurrence in the locality of our farm. The mention of hail evokes fear among Potato farmers because it’s known it can cause catastrophic consequences for Potato crops. Back ten years ago, an enormous percentage of one Summer’s Montana Certified Seed Potato crop – 10,000 acres’ worth – was savaged by hot-headed hailstorms. Maine is not immune. Just last month, fifty miles northwest of us in Northern Maine’s Eagle Lake, tennis-ball-sized hailstones pounded through the Town.

In our 47 years of living and working on Wood Prairie Family Farm, we have experienced hail no more than five times. We have had close calls, but never a growing-season hail disaster.
One of those close calls came in 2006 when we had Seed Potatoes growing in the ‘Shaw North’ Field adjacent to Kinney Road. Scott, our hired hand, and I were in a pickup, heading back to the farm from Town. It was about 10:30 on a mid-July morning. The sky was dark and it began to hail just as our pickup siddled up to the Potato field’s halfway point. This hail was pea-size and it came down hard.

The pounding on the truck cab and hood offered deafening confirmation. I shut off the truck and rolled down the driver’s window to gain an unobstructed view looking east. What was most odd was the total absence of any wind to accompany the hail. Without being egged on by the wind, the blinding hail fell serenely from the heavens but it did no harm. Potato leaves were tickled by the hail but there was absolutely zero leaf damage. This organic Certified Seed crop had just begun to bloom, sufficient indication that tubers were only about ping pong ball size. Disaster averted. However, as this storm cell forged eastward, it reorganized and caused crop damage in town three miles to our east.

About ten years earlier, our area was engulfed by a tremendous thunderstorm cell which came at us from the West. It was the middle of August, a Friday afternoon and the sky had darkened forebodingly. Witnessing the storm from the safety of our Packing Shed, we experienced ferocious winds along with a heavy deluge of rain. Our farm was drenched with almost 3 inches in just a fraction of an hour. Always backed up with work to do, after the torrent passed, we went on about our farm work, never to venture off the farm or speak with a soul.

The next morning, our farmer-friend Terry Emery stopped by for a visit from across the line over in Canada. The first words out of his mouth were, “Did ya get hit?” We explained that we got strong wind and heavy rain but had no crop damage. Terry commenced to give us a blow-by-blow account of what turned out to be a catastrophic localized hail storm. The hail swath had just spared our farm and our Potato crop by a mere quarter mile.

The impacted farmland of this hailstorm was a rectangle about three-quarter-mile wide north-to-south, and eight miles long west-to-east. Most of the damage was in the north half of Bridgewater and adjoining land in Blaine, but the hit extended some into Canada as well.

We took Sunday afternoon off and decided to drive around to survey for ourselves nature’s devastation as described by Terry. Potato-rotation-crop Oat fields which had been ready for combining instead had been abruptly totally shredded to ground level.

Potato fields which prior to the thunderstorm were verdant green with big bushy plants had been pulverized as though a steel-knife Rotobeater had gone through. No color remained in the fields and the defoliated, lacerated Potato stems limply lay defeated in the furrows on the east side of each Potato row. Now, even though forty-eight hours after the intense hail event, the shoulders of roads were still piled thick and white with accumulated hail which had not yet melted. Every single tractor-trailer parked pointing west at Smith’s Truck Stop along US Route 1 in nearby Blaine had their windshields broken. East of the Truck stop, every west-facing window in every house in the Blaine village of Robinson (‘Rob-a-sun’) had been broken and then hastily covered over with plywood.

The total damage to Maine farm crops suffered by local farmers in the compact hail havoc rectangle was $5.5 million. Because USDA had previously established a minimum threshold of $6 million crop damage to trigger disaster aid, local farmers took all their losses on the chin. Potato tubers themselves were undamaged in their soil-cocooned berths. However, the early involuntary vine-kill took a huge toll on yields, especially late varieties like Russet Burbank whose tubers had looked forward to a lot more end-of-season sizing.

In this neck of the woods, Summer storms arrive from the Northwest, West or Southwest. Thirty years ago, our old State of Maine Seed Inspector, Wayne Allen, still lived among his clan in a house on fairly high ground along US Route 1 at the south edge of Bridgewater. Wayne’s picture window faced west out across Danny Corey’s Potato field and offered a perfect, unobstructed panoramic view of Number Nine Mountain. Wayne had related to us the many times over the decades that he had observed a powerful storm coming from the West which would hit Number Nine Mountain and then split in two: with one part veering north up towards Mars Hill, and the other part heading south down to Monticello. Our farm is six miles away from Number Nine Mountain and lies directly east. As the first farm closest to Number Nine, we often find ourselves in the Nine Mountain’s rain shadow. In the case of that ferocious Go-Ahead-and-Take-It-On-the-Chin hail storm, Nine Mountain had protected us from ravage.

We’ll take the bet that year-in, year-out, the big reason we see so little hail on our farm is that Number Nine Mountain is standing guard, keeping us safe from ruin.

Jim




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MEGAN’S KITCHEN RECIPES: “Crispy Rosemary Potato Chips.” 2 1/2 c Vegetable Oil 1 pound Butte (Dry, High Solids) Potato

MEGAN’S KITCHEN RECIPES: “Crispy Rosemary Potato Chips.”

2 1/2 c Vegetable Oil
1 pound Butte (Dry, High Solids) Potatoes, scrubbed
1 tsp chopped fresh Rosemary
Sea Salt and freshly ground Pepper

In a medium saucepan fitted with a candy thermometer, heat oil to 325ºF. Using a mandoline, slice potatoes width-wise into paper-thin slices. In batches, fry potatoes heated in oil, 1 to 2 minutes, making sure not to overcrowd pan. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. While still hot, sprinkle each batch with rosemary and salt and pepper to taste.

Megan




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MAINE TALES. “Protection From Ravage and Ruin.” Bridgewater, Maine. Circa 2006. Simultaneously, I experienc


MAINE TALES. “Protection From Ravage and Ruin.” Bridgewater, Maine. Circa 2006.

Simultaneously, I experienced a dizzying, sinking feeling of impending doom, and yet also a perverse thrill at the fortuitous timing which allowed us to witness a hailstorm assault on our Potato crop.

Thankfully, hail is a rare occurrence in the locality of our farm. The mention of hail evokes fear among Potato farmers because it’s known it can cause catastrophic consequences for Potato crops. Back ten years ago, an enormous percentage of one Summer’s Montana Certified Seed Potato crop – 10,000 acres’ worth – was savaged by hot-headed hailstorms. Maine is not immune. Just last month, fifty miles northwest of us in Northern Maine’s Eagle Lake, tennis-ball-sized hailstones pounded through the Town.

In our 47 years of living and working on Wood Prairie Family Farm, we have experienced hail no more than five times. We have had close calls, but never a growing-season hail disaster.

One of those close calls came in 2006 when we had Seed Potatoes growing in the ‘Shaw North’ Field adjacent to Kinney Road. Scott, our hired hand, and I were in a pickup, heading back to the farm from Town. It was about 10:30 on a mid-July morning. The sky was dark and it began to hail just as our pickup siddled up to the Potato field’s halfway point. This hail was pea-size and it came down hard. The pounding on the truck cab and hood offered deafening confirmation. I shut off the truck and rolled down the driver’s window to gain an unobstructed view looking east. What was most odd was the total absence of any wind to accompany the hail. Without being egged on by the wind, the blinding hail fell serenely from the heavens but it did no harm. Potato leaves were tickled by the hail but there was absolutely zero leaf damage. This organic Certified Seed crop had just begun to bloom, sufficient indication that tubers were only about ping pong ball size. Disaster averted. However, as this storm cell forged eastward, it reorganized and caused crop damage three miles east of us.

About ten years earlier, our area was engulfed by a tremendous thunderstorm cell which came at us from the West. It was the middle of August, a Friday afternoon and the sky had darkened forebodingly. Witnessing the storm from the safety of our Packing Shed, we experienced ferocious winds along with a heavy deluge of rain. Our farm was drenched with almost 3 inches in just a fraction of an hour. Always backed up with work to do, after the torrent passed, we went on about our farm work, never to venture off the farm or speak with a soul.

The next morning, our farmer-friend Terry Emery stopped by for a visit from across the line over in Canada. The first words out of his mouth were, “Did you get hit?” We explained that we got strong wind and heavy rain but had no crop damage. Terry commenced to give us a blow-by-blow account of what turned out to be a catastrophic localized hail storm. The hail swath had just spared our farm and our Potato crop by a mere quarter mile.

The impacted farmland of this hailstorm was a rectangle about three-quarter-mile wide north-to-south, and eight miles long west-to-east. Most of the damage was in the north half of Bridgewater and adjoining land in Blaine, but the hit extended some into Canada as well.

We took Sunday afternoon off and decided to drive around to survey for ourselves nature’s devastation as described by Terry. Potato-rotation-crop Oat fields which had been ready for combining instead had been abruptly totally shredded. Potato fields which prior to the thunderstorm were verdant green with big bushy plants had been shredded as though a rotobeater had passed through. No color remained in the fields and the defoliated, lacerated Potato stems limply lay defeated in the furrows on the east side of each Potato row. Now, even though forty-eight hours after the intense hail event, the shoulders of roads were still piled thick and white with accumulated hail which had not yet melted. Every single tractor-trailer parked pointing west at Smith’s Truck Stop along US Route 1 in nearby Blaine had their windshields broken. East of the Truck stop, every west-facing window in every house in the Blaine village of Robinson (‘Rob-a-sun’) had been broken and then hastily covered over with plywood.

The total damage to Maine farm crops suffered by local farmers in the compact hail havoc rectangle was $5.5 million. Because USDA had previously established a minimum threshold of $6 million crop damage to trigger disaster aid, local farmers took all their losses on the chin. Potato tubers themselves were undamaged in their soil-cocooned berths. However, the early involuntary top-kill took a huge toll on yields, especially late varieties like Russet Burbank which had looked forward to a lot more end-of-season sizing.

In this neck of the woods, Summer storms arrive from the Northwest, West or Southwest. Thirty years ago, our old State of Maine Seed Inspector, Wayne Allen, still lived among his clan in a house on fairly high ground along US Route 1 at the south edge of Bridgewater. Wayne’s picture window faced west out across Danny Corey’s Potato field and offered a perfect, unobstructed panoramic view of Number Nine Mountain. Wayne had related to us the many times over the decades that he had observed a powerful storm coming from the West which would hit Number Nine Mountain and then split in two: with one part veering north up towards Mars Hill, and the other part heading south down to Monticello. Our farm is six miles away from Number Nine Mountain and lies directly east. As the first farm closest to Number Nine, we often find ourselves in the Nine Mountain’s rain shadow. In the case of that ferocious Go-Ahead-and-Take-It-On-the-Chin hail storm, Nine Mountain had protected us from ravage.

We’ll take the bet that year-in, year-out, the big reason we see so little hail on our farm is that Number Nine Mountain is standing guard, keeping us safe from ruin.

Jim




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WHEN YOU COME TO MAINE YOU’LL WANT TO VISIT ‘COASTAL MAINE BOTANICAL GARDEN.’ Last month we went down to the coast whe


WHEN YOU COME TO MAINE YOU’LL WANT TO VISIT ‘COASTAL MAINE BOTANICAL GARDEN.’ Last month we went down to the coast where Megan’s family held an annual family reunion.
Along with the rest of Maine, this Summer the coast has had more than its fair share of rainy gray days, plus they’ve had an unusually high number of foggy days.
But, over time the weather pattern shifted for the better, and the sun began to come out more regularly. On one of those sunny days we traveled over to the Town of Boothbay to enjoy the spectacular ‘Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.’
Opened in 2007, the Botanical Gardens are phenomenal in design and execution. If you make it to Maine’s Midcoast, it will absolutely be worth your while to visit and take the time to stroll its paths.
As farmers, our Botanical Garden visit had practical ulterior motives. We’ve identified the need to supplement our Annual Beneficial Insect flower beds with earlier blooming Perennials which we might establish around Potato fields, in hedgerows and headlands.
Fortuitously that day, many exhibits of Flower species were literally abuzz with Bees and Beneficial Insects, clearly displaying their applied value and garnering our greatest interest. Snapping photos allowed us to record many promising hopefuls. A first step in pursuing additional research.
One of the prettiest and bug-busiest Flowers was ‘Goldie Woolly Yarrow,’ pictured here.
For sure, we’ll be returning to the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden! Caleb, Megan & Jim




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MEGAN’S KITCHEN SALAD: ‘SUNBURST CARROT SALAD.’ 1 Bunch of Chantenay Carrots 1 Medium Lancer Parsnip Extra Virgin Oli

MEGAN’S KITCHEN SALAD: ‘SUNBURST CARROT SALAD.’

1 Bunch of Chantenay Carrots
1 Medium Lancer Parsnip
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Fine Grain Sea Salt
1 Green Chile (serrano), deveined and minced
1 Lemon, zest and juice
1 Cup Santo Cilantro, chopped
1 Cup green Pumpkin seeds (pepitas), toasted

Wash the carrots and parsnip. Use a vegetable peeler to shave carrots and parsnips into wide ribbons.

Heat a big splash of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add a big pinch of salt and stir in the vegetable ribbons. Saute for 30 seconds or so – barely long enough to take the raw edge and a bit of crunch off the carrots and parsnip. Quickly stir in the chiles and lemon zest. Remove from heat and stir in the cilantro, about one tablespoon of lemon juice, and then most of the pepitas. Taste. Add more salt and/or lemon juice if needed. Garnish with remaining pepitas.

Serves 4 to 6.

Megan




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HELPING JUSTIN POUR A CONCRETE SLAB FOR HIS NEW SHOP. A year ago, Justin and Chelsea moved back to Aroostook County fro


HELPING JUSTIN POUR A CONCRETE SLAB FOR HIS NEW SHOP. A year ago, Justin and Chelsea moved back to Aroostook County from Southern Maine where they’ve been living for about eight years.
The two met while working on Wood Prairie Family Farm ten or twelve years ago. Not long after they got married. They had enough of the faster pace down south and returned to their family’s acerage in Monticello, the next Town to the south of us.
We’re grateful they came back and that they are working for us again. Chelsea helps Megan in the office and out in the garden. She brings their active two-year-old red-headed Jack with her every morning. He’s getting a good education.
Justin is the real jack of all trades: a master builder, heavy equipment mechanic and operator, auto mechanic, electrician, farm hand and Registered Maine Guide. Caleb and Justin are best friends. They work together and play together – most especially snow sleds in the Winter, and fishing and backyard re-conditioned race cars in the Summer.
Justin is building a shop on their farm and needed a hand last week pouring a 24’ x 30’ concrete slab. Three trucks from Houlton delivered 30 yards of Redi-mix-concrete. When we were done there was less than a wheel barrow full of concrete left over.
Here, Justin at left is holding the shovel, Caleb is holding the stick with a laser level, and in back Adam is smoothing the concrete and making it ready for Justin to run the Power Screed. Caleb, Megan & Jim




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THIS YEAR’S WOOD PRAIRIE BENEFICIAL INSECT FLOWER BEDS ARE BEGINNING TO BLOOM. We plant five-foot-wide beds of Annual B

THIS YEAR’S WOOD PRAIRIE BENEFICIAL INSECT FLOWER BEDS ARE BEGINNING TO BLOOM. We plant five-foot-wide beds of Annual Beneficial Flowers both around the perimeters of our Organic Certified Seed Potato fields and in strategically-located beds within those same fields.
These specially selected varieties are ones which beyond their beauty, provide nutrition and protective habitat for Beneficial Insects which are predators of damaging insects which cause economic harm to Potato crops.
Every year the first plant to reliably bloom is humble workhorse Buckwheat. Close on Buckwheat’s heels are the bright and beautiful California Orange Poppy, pictured above.
This year, in a continuation of our on-farm research trials we have planted a mix of 17 varieties of Flowers and Herbs into our Beneficial Flower beds. Our aim is to identify the Flowers most attractive to Beneficials and offer copious staggered blooms so that our Beneficials will enjoy the longest possible grazing season. Caleb, Megan & Jim




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