Best Time!

Wood Prairie Farmers Dive Into Shipping Season.

       While we have been shipping our specialty Organic Seed Potatoes ever since we dug the first spuds back in September, this is the month when the pace really picks up. That fine crop from last Summer has been kept safe and sound in our on-farm underground Potato storage. And we’ll continue shipping continuously, every week until July.

     The colorful map above details the Shipping Schedule we’ve refined over the past 35 years. It shows the weeks we normally schedule to ship Organic Seed Potatoes to many thousands of customers like you who farm and garden in each of the 50 States we serve.

     In this issue of the Wood Prairie Seed Piece we share with you Farm Photos and stories about Winter in Maine. As well, we introduce you to three outstanding NEW! Organic Herb Seed varieties we are now offering. Plus, we’ve included a patterns-of-history Notable Quote by Winston Churchill.

     Also, scroll down to How-To Garden Resources and find a link for a FREE handbook you won’t want to miss, from our friends at the Potato Association of America (PAA), Commercial Potato Production in North America.

     As you may know by now, we’ve been farming organically for just shy of 50 years. Right from the very start, ever since we began our mail order and web Organic Seed business 35 years ago, EVERYTHING we grow and EVERYTHING we sell has ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS been Certified Organic. We are your Organic Experts and we’re here to help you! 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 grateful for your support of our Maine Organic family farm. Stay Safe & Stay Warm!

Bridgewater, Maine

 

     No sir! Sure-as-shootin' it CAN snow at minus eighteen.

     The old-timers were keen observers and prognosticators of the weather.  They had to be.  Sea-faring mariners took their lives into their own hands when they left safe harbors and set out to fish ocean waters.  Before the days of satellites, internet, television, radios and telephones, for those who lived and worked on the land or sea,  the need to understand the weather was critical and much more than pleasant chit chat for amiable conversation. 

     In 1900, 40% of the people in the United States lived on farms, and 60% lived in rural areas.  Nowadays, we’re down to 1% of Amercians living on farms and about 20% who reside in rural America.  To those who work outside in the elements, getting a handle on the weather often separates success from failure, and sometimes life from death.

     An unexpected rain would spoil hay, a surprise frosty Fall night could ruin a Tomato crop and early snow might even prevent a Potato, Corn or Soybean field from getting harvested.  And so, drawing upon a vast wealth of experience –  their own and those who came before – and as keen observers and skilled distillers of patterns, the old-timers coined phrases which tersely summed up the weather at hand.  “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”  “As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.”  “It’s too cold to snow.”


Record Book Cold

           With relentless cold from beginning to end, January 1994 was destined to become a monumental month for the record books.  That month’s lowest temperature dipped to -32ºF on January 26, tying the sixth lowest temperature on record.  But the truly big story was that days and nights remained cold during the entire month without relief.   For the first time ever, since weather records began to be collected in Caribou in 1939, the average temperature for the entire month fell below zero, to -0.7ºF.  To this day that prize for the coldest month ever remains intact.

      We remember that January well, because for four consecutive weeks we were shut down and unable to ship our perishable, freezable Organic Seed Potatoes.  Prior experience had taught us that our packages would either freeze before they got out of the State of Maine or they would freeze somewhere in transit.  And so we sat.  When that February arrived, the weather began to break.  It took us that whole month to catch back up shipping out new orders plus the ones we couldn’t ship in January.

Exception to the Rule

     Our old-timer farmer-neighbor Doss Morse (born in Bridgewater in 1899) was fond of repeating a phrase he had learned from his father, “It’s too cold to snow.” This phrase utilizes the truism that Maine cold typically comes in association with clear and dry weather.   Here, snowstorms warm things up and some of our best Winter weather will be a sunny day warmed up nice just ahead of a new snowstorm.  In fact, from a Mainer’s vantage, the difference between North and South is that snow in the North means warming weather, whereas snow in the South means it’s turning cold.

 
    We never took issue with Doss’ mantra of it being “too cold to snow.”  That had been our experience as well.  But as Cicero implied over two-thousand years ago, the “exception that proves the rule” will one day come.   The exception happened to arrive in Maine during the month of January 1994.  One cold evening, before bedtime the temperature had already dropped down to -18ºF.  And it had commenced snowing ferociously.

     It can’t hurt to look over your shoulder every so often to try and avoid getting smacked in the head by an unexpected exception.

Caleb, Jim & Megan

Megan Skiing Past Poplar Pulpwood. Accompanied by energetic Australian Shepherd, Oakley, Megan is decked out in her snow suit. She cross-country skis across a snow-plowed field road. Beside Megan is a pile of ‘semi-tree-length’ Poplar which Caleb and Justin recently cut. The field beneath and beside the pulpwood will be one of the home farm fields where we will be planting our 2023 crop of Organic Seed Potatoes. Our piles of pulpwood are headed to the mill to be chipped and made into Maine paper. We’re waiting our turn for our local independent pulp truck driver to come out and load it onto his truck with his grapple loader. The pay price is up this Winter and true to supply and demand theory, there is more Poplar being cut. So the waiting line is longer to get it hauled away. Pay price is based on a weighed 5000-pound-cord. There isn’t much evaporation this time of year with the wood being frozen. Come Spring and Summer evaporation becomes a factor and loggers like their wood picked up fresh to minimize weight loss and a resulting thinner paystub.

  Blue Flax Growing on Wood Prairie Family Farm. A shot taken last Fall during October when Maine was still lush, green and unfrozen. Organic Blue Flax is one of the dozen flower varieties we mix together and use in the Beneficial Flower refuges we plant in and around our fields of Organic Seed Potatoes. The refuges nourish and protect Beneficial Insects which help control and eat problem pests often encountered in a garden or on a farm. Most of the insects in a garden are in fact, Beneficials. If we help them out, they help us out. And we humans get pretty flowers to admire. Seems like a good deal all around!