Wood
Prairie Farm
The
Seed
Piece Newsletter
Organic
News
and
Commentary
Friday March 29, 2013

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In This
Issue of The Seed Piece:
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Maple Sap
Flowing & Still Covered in Snow.

Radish
- Elegant Crop of Early Spring. With the woods and fields
still blanketed with snow and the ponds still frozen it still looks the
part of Winter in Northern Maine. But the days are now rising above
freezing and the nights have shifted from cold to just chilly. The
maple sap started running early this year, though nothing like the
crazy remarkably early experience of 2012. Plants started inside
include onions, peppers and tomatoes. Lettuce and greens are growing in
the unheated high tunnel which is a different warm protected world
altogether on a sunny day. Seed orders are coming in and going out in a
flurry. Equipment is being repaired and seed is being cleaned for the
upcoming farming season. Hold onto your hats.
Jim
&
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood
Prairie Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
.
Click here for the
Wood Prairie Farm Home Page
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Dirigo. Maine
is ready to lead.
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Update on Historic
Maine GMO Labeling Bill.
Official word was received this morning that
LD 718, Maine’s Right to Know GMO Labeling bill will receive
its first Public Hearing before the Legislature’s Joint Agriculture,
Conservation and Forestry Committee (ACF) on Tuesday,
April 23 at 1pm in the State Capitol in Augusta.
LD 718, if
passed, would be the
first in the nation law to require the labeling of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs, also known as genetically engineered food, or ‘GE’)
and food
made with GMO ingredients. Polls
across
the country show massive support for Right to Know GMO labeling laws. Such mandatory labeling
laws are currently in
place in 62 countries around the world including Europe,
Russia and China.
The primary sponsors
of LD 718 are Senator Chris Johnson (D-Lincoln) and Representative
Lance
Harvell (R-Farmington). In
addition,
there are an incredible 123
co-sponsors made up
of Republicans, Democrats and Independents
from a legislative body of 35 Senators and 151 Representatives.
Monsanto has already
deployed lobbyists in Maine
to
defeat the people’s Right to Know GMO bill.
If you are in Maine please contact your legislators
and urge them to support LD 718. Everyone,
inside and outside Maine,
we need your contributions
in
order to mount an effective campaign to defeat Monsanto’s efforts to
thwart the
will of Maine
people and Maine
legislators. Our efforts in Maine
at establishing GMO labeling will help the entire country move forward.
Please
help Maine – even $5 is appreciated if that
is what you are able to spare.
Thanks!
Jim & Megan
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Ten Reasons Why We
Don't Need GM Foods.
From our friends at GM Watch in the UK. Footnoted
elaborations under these headings are in this excellent article.
1. GM foods won't solve the food crisis.
2. GM crops do not increase yield
potential.
3. GM crops increase pesticide use.
4. There are better ways to feed the world.
5. Other farm technologies are more successful.
6. GM Foods have not been shown to be safe to eat.
7. People don't want GM foods - so they're hidden
in animal feed.
8. GM crops are a long-term economic disaster for
farmers.
9. GM and non-GM cannot co-exist.
10. We can't trust GM companies.
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No Patents on
Life Forms. Spread the word.
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USDA. The green
world of organic farming.
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USA Map
of Organic Operations.
Here's some Maine perspective. While
this map is biased toward larger states, it does provide a visual aid
which helps one understanding where certified organic production is
occuriring. Memo to USDA: take a walk on the wild side and go ahead and
experiment with some colors beside shades of green.
Jim.
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Quotes: Vandana
Shiva and The Rights of People.
“Corporations are fictions. They have been assigned a human and a legal
personality, and now they're trying to dispossess people of their
democratic rights, and they're trying to dispossess nature of her
rights. We are at a watershed for human evolution.
We will either defend the rights of
people and the earth, and for that we have to dismantle the rights that
corporations have assigned to themselves, or corporations will in the
next three decades destroy this planet, in terms of human possibilities.”
-
Vandana Shiva
Click
here for our Organic Seed Potatoes.
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Indian Activist Dr. Vandana
Shiva. Offering clarity on the people's rights.
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Yummy Maple
Syrup Treats. Photo
by Angela Wotton. |
Recipe: Maple
Syrup Scones
Maple Syrup Scones
6 T Milk
11 T unsalted butter,
cold, cut into cubes
Preheat the oven to
400ºF degrees.
Whisk together the
maple syrup and milk in a small bowl and set aside. In a food
processor, combine the flour, oats, baking powder, and salt and pulse
to mix together. Add the butter and pulse until it resembles sandy
flour (about 20 quick pulses). Add the maple syrup milk. Pulse just
until the dough comes together. If the batter is too dry add more milk
a bit at a time.
Turn onto a floured
surface, knead once or twice just to bring the dough together. Arrange
the dough into a 1-inch thick rectangle. Slice the dough into nine
equal-sized squares. Arrange the scones next to one another on a baking
sheet, 1/4-inch distance between each of them. Bake for 20-25
minutes, or until golden along the bottom and tops. Yummy.
-Megan
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Special
Offer: (Almost)
FREE
Flat Rate Shipping!
This is a tremendous deal no one will want to
miss! Here's your chance to receive FLAT
RATE SHIPPING of only $4.99 on your next order - whether it's Organic
Seed Potatoes, Organic
Kitchen Potatoes, Organic
Vegetable Seed, Organic
Cover Crop Seed, Organic Soil
Mixes, Organic
Flour and Grain Mixes or any other item we sell
when the goods - Mix and Match - on your next order totals $59 or more.
Ordered items must weigh no more than 29 pounds total. Offer ends at
11:59 pm Eastern on Monday, April 1, 2013, so hurry!
Please use Promo Code WPF1142. Your $4.99 FLAT RATE SHIPPING
order must ship by 4/30/13. This offer may not be combined with other
offers. Please call or click today!
Click here
for our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Garden Vegetable Seed Section.
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(Almost) Free.
Flat Rate Shipping: $4.99 Per Order. Hurry. |
Our Mailbox:
Unintended, Luck, Plant Potatoes and Water.
Unintended Consequences.

Dear WPF.
Early in the A.M., on commercial stations, you can
pick up the U.S. Farm Report as well as a paid commercial for the
conventional farm organization called "farmers feeding the
world" or something like that. Anyhow, a recent chemical company
commercial on one of those programs targeted farmers who are switching
from growing Roundup Ready corn to soybeans. These farmers have to get
the correct Roundup-Ready soybeans in order to successfully kill off
the Roundup Ready corn which grows like a healthy weed in their soybean
fields. Part of the ad is a picture of tiny soybean seedlings in the
midst of which appears a robust corn stalk and written across the
cornstalk is the phrase "the end is near". On the contrary, this march
of chemical farming will never end.
JM
Camden ME
WPF Replies.
Yes control and chemical addiction is biotech's
point and their death culture treadmill continues. "Volunteers" from
the previous crop are a reality farmers often face. When GE potatoes
were introduced in the mid-1990s some of the blighty tubers left behind
from the previous Fall's harvest would sometimes not all winter kill
and would sprout and grow the next spring. Those Monsanto 'New Leaf'
potatoes had the Bt bacterial toxin gene-spliced in and they would grow
and grow (normal natural volunteers would get eaten down by Colorado
Potato Beetles - usually the field would have been rotated to grain
after potatoes) and spread and spread late blight inoculum spores to
healthy neighboring potatoes. Anyway, no one (including the Union of
Concerned Scientists to whom I had mentioned this phenomena) had
thought about this unintended consequence of growing gene-spliced
potatoes.
Jim
Wishing Maine Luck.
Dear WPF.
Wish you better luck on the GMO
Right to Know than California had!!! Somewhere, some state has got to
win this.
EH
World Wide Web
WPF Replies.
We agree and thanks. Maine, Vermont and Connecticut
have the best chance of passing a GMO Labeling law this Spring.
Jim
When to Plant
Potatoes.
Dear WPF.
I'm a new gardener and I am
getting conflicting advice as to when to plant my potatoes. Our last
Spring frost is May 1 and I have been told that's when I should plant.
MC
Charlottesville, VA
WPF Replies.
I would plant a month earlier than May 1 in Charlottesville.
Here are some popular potato planting rules of thumb: plant two weeks
after peas; plant three weeks before that last hard Spring freeze
(28ºF); plant once the soil three inches deep hits 50ºF at 7-8 AM. Here
in northern Maine the old-timers would say plant potatoes when the last
of the snow in the woods disappears (that's about mid May).
Jim
How Much To Water.
Dear WPF.
The subject of irrigation raises
a question: how long can a potato plant go without water? A relevant
question in recent years in drought-ridden Pennsylvania. How often
should I hand water my home garden patch?
CR
Philidelphia PA
WPF Replies.
Vegetable crops need 1-1.5 inch water a week from rain or
irrigation. Potatoes most especially need water beginning when tubers
start to bulk up. Potatoes are gluttons by nature and if you deny them
fertility or water they will hold it against you. Potatoes are about
85% water so be generous with your watering (2x per week is ideal) and
your friend the potato will reward you with heavy and delicious yields.
Jim
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Wood Prairie Farm Quick
Links
Jim
& Megan Gerritsen
Wood
Prairie Farm
49
Kinney Road
Bridgewater,
Maine 04735
(800)829-9765
Certified Organic, Direct from the Farm
www.woodprairie.com
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