Maine Tales.                   Thursday's Job.           Turner Center, Maine Circa 1960.


     Maine has always been a good place to live.  So it shouldn't be hard to understand that Maine is where a Mainer wants to be when that life is coming to an end.

      Megan's great grandfather was a hard-working Maine farmer by the name of Arthur Libby, born in 1872.  “Grandpa Libby” bought his family's farm in the western Maine town of Turner in 1902.  At the close of WWI, he sold that farm and bought another smaller farm in Turner Center where for decades he kept cattle and pigs, and grew apples and blueberries.    Like most any Maine farm, the family's hard work brought about a decent living, though of course no one ever approached getting rich.

      Grandpa Libby was active in his community, serving in the Grange, the local church (it was a Universalist Church) and town government. Interestingly, Julia, Arthur's wife was fourteen years Arthur's senior.  In fact, as a young woman Julia had taught Arthur in a Turner schoolhouse. 

      The Libbys were married for many years, and then Julia passed in 1944.  Shortly after the end of WWII, Grandpa Libby resettled down to Florida with his daughter, Hilda.

      The years went by in Florida.  When Grandpa Libby realized his time was coming near, he surveyed the options in front of him.  He came to the conclusion that he, by gory, was not about to die anywhere but in his great State of Maine.   So during the winter of 1959-1960, with help, he made his way back north to the farm he still owned in Turner Center and was taken care of by his other daughter, Doris's, family.

       Grandpa Libby, by nature, was resolute and a Mainer of few words.  Common to Mainers, particularly of his generation, Mr. Libby had effortlessly long, long ago mastered the art of frugality. Frugality itself was not an insubstantial reason behind Grandpa Libby's farming success, and behind the success of most every Maine farmer.

       One morning, after having gotten settled back into Maine for a week or two, Mr. Libby decided it was about time to lay things out.  With his priorities straight, at breakfast one morning, to dispel any misconceptions,  he curtly explained, "I change my teabag on Thursdays."

      It was late that winter that Grandpa Libby, at the age of 84,  died in his own bed, in his own house, in the great State of Maine.

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 Caleb, Jim & Megan Gerritsen & Family

 Wood Prairie Family Farm

 Bridgewater, Maine

Click here for the Wood Prairie Family Farm Home Page.

*Honest organic grain farmers are facing ruin from lost markets and depressed prices due to fraudulent "organic" grain being imported from Turkey and Ukraine. 

    *Honest organic dairy farmers who play by the rules are facing lowered prices and reduced quota due to a milk glut created by illegal CAFOs out West which do not meet the required pasture access rule. One single bogus "Certified Organic" 10,000 cow dairy operation in the West produces more milk that all of Maine's organic dairy farmers combined.  

     *How can an authentic Maine Certified Organic pasture-raised layer or broiler farm compete with illegal "Certified Organic" CAFOs containing 200,000 to 1,000,000 birds which provide no outdoor access as required by the Federal Rule?   They can't win when the deck has been stacked against them. Who do you think is buying and feeding out all that fraudulent East European "organic" grain?
 
     *And now we have an invasion by mega mega scale Corporate Hydroponics (crops grown without soil in water and fed by soluble nutrients) who are mounting a sophisticated campaign with the backing of  major Wall Street money.  In collusion with USDA, Big Hydro is out to con the organic industry into accepting that genuine organic farming is possible without soil.  Soil is in fact the absolute foundation of the revolutionary definition of organic farming going back 100 years.  Soil is what makes organic work, what makes the taste and nutrition of our food superior, and through carbon sequestration what contributes materially to combating climate chaos.

     *Greenhouse tomatoes grown in Holland, if marketed domestically would be prohibited from being called "organic."  However, export them to the USA and USDA allows these same tomatoes to be labeled “Certified Organic."  Even well-intentioned produce managers don't know the undifferentiated "organic" tomatoes they are selling came from fake Corporate Hydro "organic" operations.

     *Corporate Hydro fake "organic" doesn't stop at tomatoes.  It also includes greens, peppers, cukes, blueberries and more.  Those crops represent a huge portion of honest organic vegetable farmers gross income.  Backyard Farms, a Maine Hydro operation was recently bought out by a Corporate "organic" Hydro operation in the Midwest.  How long will it be before Backyard Farms gets a sell-out certifier to certify their tomato production as "organic?"  What percentage of authentic Maine organic vegetable farm sales do tomatoes account for?  What will the future hold for authentic vegetable farmers who try to compete against corporate Hydro tomatoes marketed as Maine, Local and “Organic?”  Will Backyard Farms' future production stop at "organic tomatoes?"

     A decisive 2010 vote by the NOSB - 12 to 1 - determined hydroponics is not an acceptable organic production practice.  However, hostile and renegade USDA ignored that clear NOSB consensus.  The cat is out of the bag and we now know USDA has been allowing financially-conflicted certifiers to invent their own ‘rules' and certify mega corporate operations like Driscolls and Wholesum Harvest.

     We are in a grueling fight for the soul and survival of organic as we have built it over many decades.

     Should corporate/governmental collusion prevail and organic production be severed from the soil, many of us believe there will be an accelerated loss of organic integrity. How much more degradation of organic integrity must occur before we entirely lose the confidence of organic consumers? The robustness of organic integrity impacts all of us regardless of what crops a farmer may grow or a consumer may eat. 

    The chief battleground now is Hydroponics because that is the issue on the front burner and now facing a vote at the Jacksonville NOSB meeting.  A lot of hard work has gone into keeping-the-soil-in-organic and fighting the corporate takeover of organic.  But we need help.  Our series of Rallies across the country are being held now and leading up to the late October NOSB meeting.  The Rallies are an effort to channel farmer and consumer resistance against further degradation of organic integrity, authentic organic farming, and the demise of organic family farmers.
     
     Please, go our alliance website, Keep-the-Soil-in-Organic to see how you can help.
Jim

Click Here for Our Wood Prairie Organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes.