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Wood
Prairie Seed Piece e-Newsletter Organic News and Commentary Friday, February 3rd 2017
Volume
25 Issue 03
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In This Issue of The Wood Prairie Seed Piece: Eliot Coleman Delivers
Powerful Keynote Defending Traditional Organic.
Special Offer: FREE Organic Carola Seed Potatoes. Video: Grading Rose Gold Potatoes on Wood Prairie Family Farm in Maine. Historical Timeline of New Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Recipe: Almost Flourless Valentine's Day Chocolate Beet Cake. Mailbox: Nipping Sprouts and Kennebec Good, Elba Best This edition of the Seed Piece may be found in our Seed Piece Archives. |
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Back Into Winter. 
Cave Apples, Pajaro Valley,
California. Fruit-Crate Label Art. Circa 1920.
With a recent string of mornings below zero it’s feeling more like
Winter these days in Northern Maine. Since early November we
have
been pre-grading our nice, big crop of organic certified Seed
potatoes. Our target is always the end-of-January to complete
this massive annual winter undertaking. After having graded
over one hundred
one-ton pallet-boxes, we’re virtually done - with just three boxes left
to go. Caleb’s sister, Amy – now thirteen – filmed Jim one
day as
he was grading Rose Gold potatoes. Enjoy the You
Tube video we made of the
grading-potatoes-process later on in this issue.
And please please please Do Not Miss reading the excellent Keynote Address – linked directly below - given by our good friend, fellow Maine farmer and organic icon, Eliot Coleman. .  Caleb,
Jim
&
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood
Prairie Family Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
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 .Eliot Coleman Delivers Powerful Keynote Defending Traditional Organic.
One week ago, at the Mid-America
Organic Association (MOA) Conference, held in Kansas City,
Missouri, Eliot Coleman, the Agrarian Elder and organic farmer-leader
for the past half-century, offered a rousing endorsement of the
substantial and depthful values behind traditional organic
agriculture. As is typical, Eliot’s brilliant speech was both
direct and piercing. Along with accolades for the
authentic, he rightly criticized the growing number of industry and
governmental sell-outs whose greed-motivated behavior threatens the
very foundation and survival of real organic farming.
Eliot’s powerful speech, The Adventure of Organic Farming, brought the crowd of farmers and organic advocates to their feet with a sustained, standing ovation. Please, everyone, consider this address a MUST READ. We are now at an important crossroads. If you and your family value organic, and want to see it survive for generations to come, educating yourself to the issues at hand will best be accomplished by reading Eliot’s speech and sharing copies with your friends, far and wide. Jim, Megan & Caleb Click Here for our Wood Prairie Organic Vegetable Seed. |
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Special
Offer: FREE Organic
Carola Seed Potatoes.
Many of our customers - when asked which would be their top three potato varieties in terms of taste and eating quality - would include Carola in the group. When you combine that great taste with high yields and pretty much trouble-free growing year-in, year-out, you come to understand why this German golden-fleshed variety is one of our top selling varieties. With a discernibly moister and creamier texture than Yukon Gold, if you have not yet grown Carola, you really should give it a try this year. We’ll make experimenting with Carola easy for you today. You may earn yourself a FREE 1 lb. sack of our Organic Maine Certified Carola Seed Potatoes (Value $11.95) when your next order totals $59 or more. FREE Organic Maine Certified Carola Seed Potatoes - offer ends 11:59 PM on Monday, February 6, 2017, so better hurry. Please use Promo Code WPFF404. Your order and FREE Organic Maine Certified Carola Seed Potatoes must ship by May 7, 2017. Offer may not be combined with other offers. Please call or click today! Click Here for our Wood Prairie Organic Seed Potatoes. |
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 Aroostook County Potato Grading Line. How we clean, grade and sort spuds. |
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| Historical
Timeline of New Katahdin
Woods and Waters National Monument. Back in August, 2016, the people of the United States were the recipients of a remarkable donation of 87,000 acres of forestland from Bert’s Bees dynamo Roxanne Quimby. The donated Northern Maine forest block is located just east of Maine’s most famous mountain, Katahdin, and the 200,000-acre Baxter State Park which surrounds and protects the monolith. Soon, by Presidential decree, the beautiful parcel became one of America’s newest additions of the National Park system. It was designated Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Now, our friends at the Natural Resources Council of Maine have created a valuable National Monument Timeline which provides good background. The history of the Katahdin region is really quite fascinating, so do take a look. Caleb & Jim Click Here to our Wood Prairie Organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes |
 New Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Plan your visit now. |
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Recipe: Almost
Flourless Valentine's Day Chocolate Beet Cake.
9 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate 3/4 c (1 1/2
sticks) butter
6 eggs, separated
3/4 c granulated
sugar
1 c pureed
cooked beets,
about 5 medium
3/4 c spelt
flour
Preheat oven to
350F.
Combine
chocolate and butter in a bowl set over barely simmering water. Stir
until chocolate mixture is melted and smooth. Let cool to room
temperature.
Whisk together
the egg yolks and sugar until light and well-blended. Whisk yolks and
sugar into chocolate mixture, whisking well. Stir in the pureed beets
and spelt flour.
Beat egg whites
with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gently fold egg whites
into chocolate mixture until just combined.
Pour batter into
6 - 8 greased cups. Bake 15 minutes. Centers will jiggle slightly when
done. Cool on a wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar to garnish.
Delicious! -Megan |
 Valentine's Day Chocolate Cake. Photo by Angela Wotton. |
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| Mailbox:
Nipping Sprouts and
Kennebec Good, Elba Best. Nipping Sprouts.  Hi Jim, Question: Yukon Gold potatoes we harvested this summer are already getting long sprouts. should we rub off the sprouts? Would that help them last longer through the winter? Or would it cause them to generate yet more sprouts? Thanks! GM WWW Yes, rub off the sprouts. And keep rubbing the new sprouts off every couple of weeks until you use them up. Jim Kennebec Good, Elba Best. Hello, I've been growing Kennebec potatoes for a few years now and love them! I am, however, having trouble with storing them washed without them degrading quickly. Their skins are so thin taht they bruise up easily when run through the root washer. I'm curious if you have any insights into storing Kennebecs for wholesale sales in the winter. Thanks. JP WWW It's best not to wash a ny potato prior to storage. Washing sets off enzyme activity which causes potatoes to decline in quality. In our organic potato business we take this to the extreme and never wet-wash potatoes feeling to maintain utmost quality and nutrition. Potatoes should only be washed immediately prior to cooking. Instead, we clean our potatoes using motorized rubber and nylon brushers (Haines Manufacturing, Presque Isle, Maine) which effectively buff clean the potatoes, leaving a thin patina of soil which protects the tubers until they are rinsed off right before cooking. We grew Kennebecs for many years and they have some very good qualities. However, we found that the Kennebec thin-skin problem is likely to occur when they are grown in any soil which doesn't have pretty high organic matter. After trialing side-by-side for several years we opted to drop Kennebec and now instead grow as organic Maine certified seed the Cornell variety Elba (http://www.woodprairie.com/product/391/certified-organic-seed-potatoes). Elba not only has thicker-skin, but we believe it tastes at least as good as Kennebec and is also superior in numerous other production attributes including higher tuber set, better disease resistance, avoidance of shoulder greening and overall ruggedness. 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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