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Wood
Prairie Seed Piece
e-Newsletter
Organic
News
and
Commentary
Friday,
February 17th 2017
Volume
25 Issue 04
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In This
Issue of The Wood Prairie Seed
Piece:
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Longer Days
Now.
Caleb Loading Potatoes This
Morning.
This photo was taken this morning - early - Caleb loading five pallets
of our organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes onto a truck headed south.
It's still cold at night - last week we had several mornings in the
-18ºF range, but with the sun rising in the sky the day's high
temperatures bounces back pretty well. We've been back in the snow
business here in Maine. Time again to shovel more snow off the roof
here and there - amidst the work of shipping out a boatload of seed
potatoes.
.
Caleb,
Jim
&
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood
Prairie Family Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
Click here for the
Wood Prairie Family Farm Home Page.
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From
Stump to Ship. A rare find.
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. Maine Logging History: From Stump to Ship.
Thirty-five years ago we first watched the
remarkable film From
Stump to Ship
which documented logging in 1930 in Downeast Maine.
At that
time the long lost film was making its heralded premier in rounds
across the entire State of Maine in a series of public viewings.
In Aroostook County, the viewing opportunity was in the Weiden
Auditorium on the University of Maine, Presque Isle campus.
And it was standing room
only.
The film was made in the silent-movies era. It was a local
effort
to document an era of logging which a few visionaries rightly believed
would be soon coming to an end.
For
many decades the film was misplaced and lost. That it was
eventually re-discovered on a dusty shelf is only a part of the
story. What is
extraordinary is that when the film was finally found, it was securely
attached to a printed script, designed to be read by a
narrator as the silent film played.
As you will see and hear, the detail provided by the script is what
makes this modernized film so valuable. The narrator you’ll hear is Maine
humorist and actor Tim Sample.
A little known fact is that, despite his noticeable Downeast accent,
Tim was born in the Aroostook County potato town of Fort Fairfield.
Our friend Ginny
Williams father, Frank
Pelletier, a lifelong logger and former Legislator,
was the emcee that evening in Presque Isle. After the
showing,
Frank took questions and comments from the audience. Several
different people in the audience revealed that they recognized this
individual - or that - in the film, as a relation of theirs who worked
Downeast as a logger some fifty years before.
Jim & Megan
Click
here for Our Certified Organic Cover Crop Seed.
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Special
Offer: FREE Organic
Huckleberry Gold Seed Potatoes.
One of
the best new varieties
we’ve grown and tasted in a long time is Huckleberry
Gold.
We’ve been planting Huckleberry Gold (blue skin and deep
golden
flesh) for several years now and we’ve come to respect its high
culinary quality, reliability in the field and beautiful
appearance.
Here’s your chance to get a start this
year with Huckleberry Gold. Earn yourself a FREE
1 lb. sack of our Organic Maine Certified Huckleberry Gold Seed Potatoes
(Value $11.95) when your next order totals $59 or more. FREE
Organic Maine Certified Huckleberry Gold Seed Potatoes Offer
ends 11:59 PM on Monday, February 20, 2017, so please act now.
Please use Promo Code WPFF405. Your order
and FREE Organic Maine
Certified Huckleberry Gold 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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Huckleberry
Gold. A wonderful new must
grow potato for your garden.
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Origin of the Potato.
Scientific advance.
Starch Grains
Advance in Potato Archeology.
The importance of the potato is reflected by the
fact that
it is the fourth biggest human food crop following corn, rice and wheat.
Potatoes semi-perishable qualities affect the people who eat them, the
farmers who grow them and the archaeologists who wish to understand
their impact on human history.
Now a novel scientific technique - examining starch grains - is being
deployed to determine where, when and how humans became involved with
the potato. The
New York Times reports.
Jim
Where
in South America potatoes first became domesticated, however, is still
unknown. Recent genetic studies point to the Andean highlands in
southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia as the crop’s birthplace, but a
lack of direct plant evidence has made it difficult to confirm...
Starch
grain analysis, which is a relatively novel method, was key to finding
evidence of potatoes because the tubers do not preserve well, Dr.
Aldenderfer said. 'When a seed burns, you often get something left of a
seed husk. When corn cobs burn, you get something left of the cob. When
potato burns, it burns up — very seldom do you get actual bits.'
The
early cultivation of potatoes seems to have been part of a larger shift
at Jiskairumoko, from hunting and gathering toward farming and herding,
he added. Around the same time, people started to build more complex
houses, and the beginnings of a social hierarchy emerged. In 2008, a
team led by Dr. Aldenderfer found a gold necklace from Jiskairumoko
dating back to 2000 B.C., suggesting that an elite class had formed by
then.
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Click
Here for our Certified Organic Potatoes for the Kitchen.
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IFOAM Report:
State-of-World-Organic 2017.
Organic continues to make
rapid growth world wide – in
the double-digits in many countries – according to a new
report by world umbrella organization International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, for which Jim serves as
president, is an active member of IFOAM and works on issues of
importance to developing organic seed systems.
The recently
released IFOAM
Report
documents the impressive worldwide growth and strength of organic
agriculture. The Report is chock full of statistics and explains the
organic boom with twenty
graphs and charts.
Organic
growth continues at a rapid pace - driven by strong consumer demand.
Among the highlights are organic production is now practiced by 2.4 million farmers in 179
countries (up from 172) on almost 126 million acres of farm land.
In eleven countries, 10% - or more - of farmland is organic. The three
countries with the highest percentage of organic farmland are Liechtenstein (30.2%),
Austria (21.3%) and Sweden (16.9%).
Annual sales of organic goods now top $80 billion world wide, with half
of those sales in the United State alone. Denmark has the highest organic
market share at 8.4%.
Caleb, Jim & Megan
Click
Here for our Wood Prairie Certified Organic Vegetable Seed.
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Strong
Organic Growth Worldwide. Organic is growing in leaps and
bounds.
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Notable Quotes: Gandhi on
Tyrants
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Recipe: Oatmeal
Date Cookies.
1-1/4 cups whole wheat
flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. sea
salt
3/8 tsp. ground cardamom
4 oz. (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3 cups rolled oats
1-1/2 cups chopped, pitted Medjool dates
Heat the oven to 350˚F. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda,
salt, and cardamom.
In
a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the butter and both sugars
on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add the
eggs and vanilla, and beat until combined. On low speed, mix in the dry
ingredients until combined. Using a wooden spoon, fold in the oats and
dates until evenly distributed.
Drop rounded tablespoons of
dough about 2 inches apart onto two ungreased cookie sheets. Bake,
rotating the sheets and swapping positions halfway through, until the
cookies are firm and golden, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the sheets to
cooling racks and let sit for 5 minutes. Transfer the cookies directly
to the racks to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough on
cooled cookie sheets. Makes about 40
cookies.
-Megan
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Outstanding
Oatmeal Date Cookies.
Photo by Angela Wotton.
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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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