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In This Issue of The
Wood Prairie Seed Piece:
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This edition of the Seed
Piece may be
found in our Wood Prairie
Seed Piece Archives.
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Before the Black
Flies.

Boundary.
Bridgewater, Maine. Circa
1910 .
Photo of the Boundary
settlement on the Maine side of the International
Boundary Line with Canada. This is the locale where the
earliest European-American settlers first came into the
Township of Bridgewater, beginning back in 1827. Local
citizens are congregating on the porch of the local
store. A lone tree is prominent in an area which one
hundred years before was entirely forested. Once cleared
of trees, the fields were used for farming, and to this
day Maine
Certified Seed Potatoes are grown by
Maine farmers in the adjacent fields .
Here at Wood
Prairie Family Farm we are caught up
and current on all orders. After grading out our own
seed to plant on our farm, and after taking a new
inventory of what stocks remain, we are now able to
offer again for sale some of your favorite
varieties available NOW for
immediate shipment. Organic Maine Certified Seed
Potatoes now available include, Organic
Adirondack Blue, Organic
Adirondack Red, Organic
All-Blue, Organic
Baltic Rose, Organic
Butte Russet, Organic
Caribe, Organic
Caribou Russet, Organic
German Carola, Organic
French Charlotte, Dark
Red Norland, Elba,
Huckleberry
Gold, Keuka
Gold, Rose
Gold, and Yukon
Gold. Please order today
while these great varieties are still in-stock!
With this issue of the Wood
Prairie Seed Piece we offer a brand
new Maine Tales, entitled “Grab the Cornflake
Box!” about our hard-working friend, Glen, who lived in
Tracy Mills on the Canadian side of the Line, just a few
miles from Boundary. You’ll also receive encouragement
from us on how to protect your soil the easy way with Organic
Cover Crops. We’ll help you get
started with a Limited-Time Offer for FREE
Organic
Buckwheat Cover Crop Seed. And a tasty
recipe from Megan for Maine Potato Candies. As well,
conservationist Wallace Stegner shares with us the
treasure he has discovered in a new Notable
Quotes.
Please do let us know how we can help you! Happy
Planting and Thanks for your support!

Caleb,
Jim & Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood Prairie Family Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
Special
Offer! FREE
Wood
Prairie Organic
Cover Crop Seed!
Place a New
Order and Receive a FREE 2 lbs. Sack of Organic
Buckwheat Cover Crop Seed ($9.99 Value) with
a Minimum $65 Order. FREE
Buckwheat Cover Crop Seed must ship with order and
no later than 5/15/23.
Please
use Coupon Code WPFF256.
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Maine Tales. Grab the
Cornflake Box!
Tracy Mills, New Brunswick. Canada. Circa
1933.

Kellogg’s
Toasted Corn Flakes. Battle Creek, Michigan. Circa
1920.
“The Original Has
This Signature – W.K. Kellogg. Fine with Berries, Peaches
or Bananas.”
Now,
no one could blame Glen for hesitating. Who in their
right mind would run into a burning house after a box of
Corn Flakes? This disastrous farmhouse fire happened
when Glen was a young man of fifteen. By then,
he’d ended his schooling and he was working for a local
Potato farmer, on the Canadian side of the ‘Line.’
Bridgewater Barrel
Mill
Many years later in the
1970s, Glen and I worked together at Bridgewater
Barrel. I was the most breathless one of four
‘Coopers’ who everyday would each ‘make’ fifty
eleven-peck cedar Potato barrels. Glen was one of
the ‘Nailers’ who would set barrel cleats into the
barrelheads, then pound in nails to secure them.
He’d also drive and clinch hoop nails by mounting a
barrel onto a cast-iron ‘barrel wheel,’ fashioned from
an old flat-belt pulley which protruded sufficiently
from the wall on a shaft. Glen would drive a nail
through the hand-shaved Brown Ash barrel hoops (rhymes
with ‘books’) and sawn staves Coopers had used to
‘make’ their barrels. One nail was needed for each
stave for all six ash hoops, sixteen staves per
barrel. Ninety-six nails per barrel, not counting the
18 needed for the six barrelhead cleats.
We all worked piece-rate. As
a Nailer, Glen got paid 55 cents per barrel. Coopers
got paid 80 cents. In the 1970s, a Cooper making $40 a
day was big money in Northern Maine – worth $200/day
in 2023 dollars. It took the equivalent of three
Nailers to keep up with four Coopers. When they
got caught up on odds and ends, Edgar Wheeler and
Robbie Brewer, the owners, would come in and help Glen
and the other Nailers keep up. Working together we’d
build a thousand new barrels every week, ahead of the
big seasonal rush for barrels needed by local Potato
farmers every Spring.
Tracy Mills Tales
Glen had his own distinctive
way of launching into a story. Most often, out of the
blue he’d get your attention calling out, “…Ya know
it, Jim?” Amidst pounding adzes and hammers, as the
named designee, my duty was to reply, “What’s that,
Glen?” Then he’d dive into a story which most
often had something to do with work, consistent with
our Potato country’s hard-work-culture. Glen
would most generally begin his story with one time
worn expression he’d certainly gotten his money’s
worth out of. “Well, I wenna work…” [Well, I went to
work].
“Well, I wenna work and laid
down on the Chesterfield last night after supper. Then
all of a sudden this truck pulls into the drive. I got
up and went out to see what the all the commotion was
about. Well, it was so and so, and he handed me
the $700 he’d owed me for fixing his truck. It’s
been five years! I’d given up hope I’d ever see that
money.”
With a wife and daughter,
Glen had been a steady working man his entire life.
When still a young man he worked in a local sawmill
which featured a “gang saw,” which with a single
pass of the log-carrying-carriage would
simultaneously saw out a half-dozen pieces of lumber
at a time. A foolhardy co-worker would
habitually negotiate a short cut getting to the far
side of the mill. He’d take a treacherous path which
included stepping on the log as the carriage propelled
the log towards the saw blades. Every last man in that
mill quit the day that showoff made a disastrous
misstep that ended his life.
The Cold Truth
Glen had dual-citizenship and
lived on the Canadian side, along the Prestile Stream.
His commute to the Barrel Mill on our side in
Bridgewater Center was only a few miles longer that
the drive from our farm into town. We both aimed
to get into work by 430am. Of course, as we got
going building wood fires to take the chill out of the
air, we’d trade notes on that Winter morning’s low
temperature or the depth of new snowfall. On clear,
cold nights that bitter Winter air would settle down
into hollow of the Prestile and he’d always be colder
– sometimes as low as -45ºF – than our farm out to the
west on the high ground next to the North Maine Woods.
A life of hard physical work
had taken its toll on Glen, then in the 1970s he was
into his seventh decade. He had problems with the
circulation in his feet and had long before lost
feeling below his knees. Young Billy was well-known as
an incessant practical joker. He was almost through
high school and would come in afternoons to help Nail.
One day Billy was crawling around on his hands and
knees at Glen’s feet. Beneath Glen’s rotund
frame and the horizontal barrel he was nailing, the
floor and Billy were not visible. But we could all
hear Billy’s hammer pounding away. Glen called out,
“What are ya doin’ Billy?” With an indignant tone in
his voice Billy replied disingenuously, “I’m hammering
down the floorboard nails here so you won’t trip!” The
truth of the matter was however, Billy had
surreptitiously nailed the sole of one of Glen’s
workboots to the floor. A moment later, when Glen had
finished nailing the barrel he was on, he made a
movement towards his next barrel. With nailed
barrel-in-hand Glen toppled down to the floor in slow
motion. The Coopers and the other Nailers, deducing
what had just happened stifled their laughter and kept
on working as piece-workers are want to do. Joke
expired, and with the only hurt being Glen’s pride a
little bit, Billy helped Glen by removing the sole
full of nails.
Another time Glen told us
about his years serving in the Canadian Army during
WWII. Seems one day, when he still had a year or two
to go, Glen’s commanding officer came over and
surprised Glen by saying he’d been discharged and
he could go back home to Tracy Mills. Curious, I
inquired, “Why’d that happen?” Glen, then old enough
to be wise and not one to tempt fate replied, “I never
asked.”
Depression Times
That decade before
the War, the Great Depression had hit very hard in
Potato country on both sides of the border. The
price for Potatoes had collapsed and it was all
farmers could do to hold onto their farms and avoid
foreclosure. One hundred years ago banks were much
more numerous, much more decentralized and too often
wobbly to boot. Bank failures had been going on
for decades and their fails were observed and
internalized by farmers everywhere. After
getting left high and dry by a multitude of things
outside of their control, generations of farmers,
good at remembering, had passed down their
accumulated wisdom. Farmers on both sides of the
Line had learned to grow wary of banks, both on the
borrowing end and on the savings end.
Glen related as to how on
this one particular day during the Depression, he’d
been outside with the old farmer he was working for.
They both saw the smoke and ran towards the farmer’s
burning house. Arriving on the scene, the farmer
hollered at Glen, “Run inside and grab the Corn
Flake box under my rocker!” It took a second
strong admonition to get Glen moving, “Go on, Glen,
go!” Glen leaped into action, ran into the house and
made a beeline to the favored rocking chair. Once
there he got down on his knees, and amidst the
smoke and flames pawed around under the
chair until he felt the Corn Flake box. Grabbing it
and carrying the box like a running back would carry
a football, Glen sprinted back out of the house,
just in the nick of time.
Glen handed the smoky Corn
Flakes box over to the grateful farmer. It was only
at that moment that, though the farmer had lost his
home to the tragic fire, Glen realized he had
saved the day by rescuing the farmer’s life
savings, kept safe and hidden inside that old Corn
Flakes box.
Jim

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Megan's Kitchen
Recipes:
Maine Potato Candies.
Also known as Needhams, the
widespread belief in these parts is that Maine Potato
Candies originated here in the potato country of northern
Maine. You'll often find recipes for Needhams in old time
Maine cookbooks. And what could be better and richer than
chocolate, coconut and potatoes! Megan
3/4 cup of mashed Elba
(or equivalent) potatoes
2 lbs of powdered Sugar
1/4 lb of butter
1/2 pound flaked coconut (about 2+ cups)
2 tsp vanilla
Pare, cook and mash the potatoes to
make 3/4 cup. In a double broiler on top of the stove, melt
the butter over boiling water. Add the mashed potato,
powdered sugar, flaked coconut and vanilla. Mix well. Spread
the mixture evenly in a buttered cookie sheet. Place in a
cool place to harden - such as a cool garage. When hard, cut
the mixture into small squares for dipping in the chocolate.
Chocolate Dip
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cake paraffin wax
Melt the paraffin in the bowl of a
double broiler. Add the chocolates and melt. Stir well. Dip
the Needham squares in the chocolate with a toothpick and
place on waxed paper to harden. Makes 66 good-sized
Needhams. The recipe may be cut in half.
Megan |

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Notable Quotes:
Stegner on Our Best.
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Quick Links to
Popular Products.
Caleb & Jim & Megan Gerritsen
Wood Prairie Family Farm
49 Kinney Road
Bridgewater, Maine 04735
(207) 429 - 9765 / 207
(429) - 9682
Certified Organic From Farm to Mailbox
www.woodprairie.com
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