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Wood
Prairie Farm
The
Seed
Piece Newsletter
Organic
News
and
Commentary
Wednesday
August 20, 2014

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In This
Issue of The Seed Piece:
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Fall
& Harvest Ahead.
Maine
Shifting From Summer to Fall. Look for our Harvest
Catalog which will soon be in your mailbox. Most of the last ten days
have seen consistently chilly mornings in the 40s and low 50s, and cool
days in the 60s and 70s. Today we cracked 80ºF, which serves as a
gentle reminder that while Summer in Northern Maine is going by, it is
not yet gone.
With the dry weather we are irrigating
our crops. Work is now aimed at getting ready for harvest. Our organic
Hard Red Spring Wheat and Hull-less Oats ought to be ready for our
combine next week. Soon we'll begin killing potatoes to get them ready
for harvest. In a month the local schools will close for the three week
Harvest Break and we'll begin potato harvest in earnest. Up here it has
been a pretty good growing year and the crops look good.
We hope wherever you are, that your
crops are also doing well and that your harvests ahead will be
bountiful.
.
Jim
&
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood
Prairie Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
Click here for the
Wood Prairie Farm Home Page.
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GE Contamination
and How It Affects Your Family's Food.
Nick Meyer of AltHealthWorks
spoke with Organic
Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA)
President Jim Gerritsen and from that interview has produced this
valuable article. The piece, Organic
Farmers Must Do These 11 Things Just to Prevent Being Contaminated (and
Sued), explains the impact of GE
contamination and why the issue is important for both you and your
family as well as organic farmers. “'If I decided to spray my
house purple and I sprayed on a day that was windy, and my purple paint
drifted onto your house and contaminated your siding and shingles,
there isn’t a court in the nation that wouldn’t in two minutes find me
guilty of irresponsibly damaging your property,' he said. 'But when it
comes to agriculture (since the advent of GMOs), all of a sudden the
tables are turned.'"
Ultimately, organic farmers must have
their private property rights protected from the unwanted trespass and
contamination created by irresponsible Biotech pollution if citizens
are to retain their right of access to an alternative to force-fed
genetically-engineered food.
The avoidance of GE contamination looms as such a
pressing issue for the organic community that OSGATA recently published
an in-depth, peer-reviewed handbook to help organic farmers protect
themselves from biotech’s genetic pollution. The book is
entitled Protecting
Organic Seed Integrity: The Organic Farmer's Handbook to GE Avoidance
and Testing. You may download a copy
of the handbook at no cost from the OSGATA website or order a hard copy
version.
Click
Here For Our Wood Prairie Farm Certified Organic Specialty Potatoes for
Your Kitchen.
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Straight Talk About GE
Contamination. What every eater
should know.
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Baxter Park
Tornado Track. Trail the trouble from July 2013 twister.
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Newly
Released Video of Tornado Destruction Near Maine's Katahdin.
Tornadoes are rare in Maine, but they do happen
and apparently with increasing frequency. The National
Weather Service has just released a birds-eye-view
Aerial Flyover video (1:49) of striking damage
caused by an EF1 tornado July 19, 2013 in Maine’s 200,000 acre
wilderness-managed Baxter State Park which includes ‘Maine’s Greatest
Mountain,’ Katahdin.
Don’t
miss portion of the video where the deep forest trees were laid down in
a discernible pattern by the cyclonic winds.
Here at Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater - 50
miles to Katahdin’s northeast – we were free of storms that day of
Friday’s tornado. However, just two days earlier we received
nearly an inch of rain with strong thunderstorms. That rain
ended our month-long Maine ‘drought’ and with it a pattern shift which
turned the rest of July 2013 into the second wettest July on record.
Jim & Megan
Click
Here For Our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Pancake Mixes.
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Maine's North Pond
Hermit Revisited.
Maine’s North Pond Hermit is back in
the news. Montana journalist Michael Finkel corresponded with
and spent a total of nine hours interviewing Christopher Knight while
he was held in jail. Knight, you will recall, was the
man who as a twenty-year-old choose to remove himself from society and
instead live as a hidden recluse alone in a tent in the woods of Maine
for 27 years before being arrested during a
subsistence burglary in April 2013.
The
revelations in the GQ
article is the first time Chris Knight has
confided in a reporter. “He wrote little about his time in
the woods, but what he did reveal was harrowing. Some years, he made it
clear, he barely survived the winter. In one letter, he told me that to
get through difficult times, he tried meditating. ‘I didn't meditate
every day, month, season in the woods. Just when death was near. Death
in the form of too little food or too much cold for too long.’
Meditation worked, he concluded. ‘I am alive and sane, at least I think
I'm sane.’ As always there was no formal closing. His letters simply
ended, sometimes mid-thought.”
Extensive details of Chris’ remarkable
solitary life have been revealed in Finkel’s MUST READ article in the
new September issue of GQ magazine.
Jim
Click
Here for our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Grain Pantry Section.
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Christopher Knight. Maine Hermit featured in new GQ.
(Illustration by Tim O'Brien)
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Notable Quotes:
Thoreau on Sweet Corn.
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Delicious
Blueberry Zucchini Bread.
Photo
by Angela Wotton |
Recipe:
Blueberry Zucchini Bread
3
eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 c vegetable oil
3 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c sugar
3 c shredded
zucchini
3 c whole
wheat flour
1 tsp sea
salt
1 tsp baking
powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 T ground cinnamon
1 pint fresh blueberries
Crumb Topping
2/3 c flour
1/2 c brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 c softened butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease Bundt pan and set aside.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla and sugar. Fold
in zucchini.
Mix in flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon and stir
until combined.
Gently fold in blueberries and move to Bundt pan.
For the crumb topping, mix the ingredients with your hands and sprinkle
over the top of the batter. Bake 55 minutes or until a knife inserted
in the center of the cake comes out clean.
Megan
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Special Offer: FREE Shipping! On
Your Next Order! Hurry! Limited Time Offer!
If you act right away you earn yourself a
great deal with our FREE Shipping on
your next order. It’s easy and here’s how!
1)
First, place your order online, by phone or mail it in.
2)
Then tell us when you want your order shipped
***
Ship Now
- if the goods are in
stock and ready-to-go.
-
or –
***
Ship As Soon as Your
Items are
Harvested -
as in the case of
our Organic Seed
or Kitchen Potatoes
and Winter Vegetables,
products
which will be ready at Harvest in September and October.
–
or –
***
Ship Later in the Fall ,
Winter or
even Next Spring - as in the case of our Winter or
Spring planted Organic Seed Potatoes
which are
shipped directly out of our state-of-the-art underground potato storage
facility.
Please use Promo Code WPF1184. Special
FREE Shipping! Offer order (minimum order $35)
will be processed now
and order must ship by 5/1/15. Order may not be combined with
other
offers or deals. FREE
Shipping Offer is
for retail orders only and is limited to a maximum $300
shipping credit so
you can SAVE BIG on all orders including huge amounts of Organic
Certified
Seed Potatoes.
But
this is a Limited Time Offer and you MUST
ORDER NOW! Subzero temperatures may delay mid-winter
shipping until
the weather warms.
Questions?
Call (800)829-9765!
Special
FREE Shipping! Offer ends Monday August 25,
2014 at Midnight so please
call or click today!
Click here for our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Maine
Certified Seed Potato
Section
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FREE Shipping!
on Your Next Order of Wood Prairie Farm Organic Potatoes or any other
product. Harvest is just around the corner.
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Our Mailbox: Ready
For Organic & Impressed with Potatoes.
Ready For Organic.
Dear WPF.
Placed an order with Jon today
via telephone - so helpful, knowledgeable, efficient & pleasant
too - thanks so much. Boy are we ever ready for Wood Prairie Farm's
Organic Food! We pretty much eat it all due to limited growing space
(and with help of some wildlife and neighbors) and it's organic (we
share).
We love your food and so do our family
and friends and for this "chef" it's nice to know I'm ready if they
drive up. I'm still very verbal about use of unnecessary, harmful
chemicals, GMO etc. Thank you for your work. We're with you.
JD
Richmond, VA
WPF Replies.
We're
grateful for your good words and appreciate your many years of
business.
Jim & Megan.
Impressed with
Potatoes.
Dear WPF.
Jim Gerritsen
& Family,
I recently received my order of parsnips, carrots
and 5
grain cereal. We are enjoying all of these products. I had only tried
parsnips once before and they were not organic and they were from a
grocery store. I did not like them and had not eaten them since. So I
took a chance on your parsnips, thinking if I still hate fresh, organic
ones, I might be able to give them away. No one is getting your
parsnips. I loved them!
I also ordered 50 lbs of
potatoes when you had a special on them offering free shipping. The
potatoes arrived after the parsnip order, and I can't begin to tell you
how impressed I was with them when I first opened the box. The care
that was taken with handling and cleaning those potatoes was quiet
evident. And the flavor is fantastic.
Shortly
after I placed the potato order, I was a bit angry with myself that I
took advantage of your free shipping offer. I could see that it cost
you $20 to deliver them to me. And I am well aware of all the time and
effort you put into trying to fight Monsanto and trying to ensure that
our food supply is safe. I am also a member of MOFGA and know of your
support of them. Plus I have liked your Facebook page and have read all
of your posts about the injustices that are being brought upon farmers
by big business and Monsanto and their likes. If you suggest we sign a
petition etc. I am on it. My husband and I grew up in Dayton, Ohio
where Monsanto was first headquartered (the Mound) and have friends and
family who have suffered illness and death from the unhealthy working
conditions there.
Thank you so much for the work you do.
It means a lot to us.
Enclosed please find a check to reimburse you for
shipping
the potatoes plus a bit more to show our appreciation. And also thank
you for the wonderful produce!
With deep appreciation,
PF
Jonesboro, Maine
WPF Replies.
You are very kind and offer proof that we have the
best customers in the world. Thank you.
Jim & Megan
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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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