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Wood
Prairie Farm
The
Seed
Piece Newsletter
Organic
News
and
Commentary
Friday,
December 11th 2015
Volume
23 Issue 25
Enjoy Receiving The Seed
Piece?
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today and
support our continuing
educational
work which includes The Seed
Piece.
Thanks!

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In This
Issue of The Seed Piece:
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Winter's
Here.
Snow in Northern Maine A Safe Bet
for December. We got done Fall plowing in the
very last few days of November – our
latest days for field work ever.
Just a few days after that, in early December we received another
snowfall – this time eight inches. Now, a week later that
snow still covers the ground.
Our brand new “Snowy Tractor” Winter Catalog has
been put in the mail and will soon be arriving in your mail box – so
please keep an eye out for it.
Many of your know that we ship
our Organic
Maine Certified Seed Potatoes out of our
underground potato storage for ten months of the year from September
through the 4th of July. Despite Winter in Maine, this week
we’ve been shipping seed potatoes to folks down in Florida, Texas and
southern California.
The 400 tubers-per-seed-lot “Florida Test”
potatoes growing in the State of Maine’s Post-Harvest-Winter-Grow-Out
Seed Certification Test on its farm in Homestead FL – near the
Everglades – have been drenched with heavy rains of late.
Our local State seed inspectors will be flying down to begin collecting
and recording disease readings (“Florida
Readings”) on January 4.
Next Thursday, December 17,
we’ll be kicking off our inaugural
Wood
Prairie Potato School Webinar series.
We want you
to connect with the fun! And it’s EASY to sign
up! These live video Webinars will be FREE.
We are presenting them exclusively for you and our other Wood Prairie
Farm customers and friends. Catch the Wood Prairie
Potato School Webinar details in the first article of this
Seed
Piece. Please join us!
.
Jim
&
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood
Prairie Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
Click here for the
Wood Prairie Farm Home Page.
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Save Your Seat Today!
The first class in our Wood
Prairie Potato School Webinar series FREE!
Next Thursday December 17, 1:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT) |
FREE Wood
Prairie Potato School Webinar Series
Starts Next Thursday!
Twice each Winter – in December and January -
Maine Cooperative Extension agents put on one-and-two day-long Potato Schools
up here in Aroostook County. We’ve been attending these
schools for decades and they’ve proved valuable and a good way to keep
current with all things potato.
It’s in that same spirit that next week we’ll
begin our own new FREE Wood Prairie Potato
School Webinar series exclusively
for customers and friends of Wood Prairie Farm. We think you
will enjoy learning more about the world’s most widely grown vegetable from the comfort of your own home.
The first hour-long
webinar-class of Wood Prairie
Potato School will be next Thursday,
December 17, 2015 at 1pm Eastern (10am Pacific).
In each session we’ll discuss a new aspect of growing organic potatoes,
cover different potato varieties, tell potato stories, and provide tips
and tech niques for growing
more successful potato crops. This FREE webinar-series
is designed for you
- whether you are a small scale backyard home gardener or a family
farmer who is growing spuds to sell at the local Farmers
Market.
Each Wood Prairie
Potato School webinar-class will feature Live-Chat
so you can type-in your questions to us in real time.
You can bet we’ll be sure to include plenty of
time for you to ask us your toughest potato questions.
And don’t worry - if
your schedule prevents you from attending this live webinar –
or - you want to watch it over again with your friends -
we’ll record
and archive every program so you can watch it
anytime at your convenience.
If you are without internet -
or your internet service is slow or unreliable - we’ll have a call-in
number in which you can dial-in
from a telephone and listen wherever you are to the
webinar audio. If this option works best for you, please simply call
our office during the
work week (207.429.9765) and ask for Frank who will get
you set up.
It’s easy to join our Webinar
– and remember it’s FR EE.
Please click on the Sign Up Now! button and get ready to enjoy your first
day of Wood Prairie
Potato School!
Jim & Megan
Click
Here for Our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Maine Certified Seed Potatoes.
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Special
Offer: Attend Wood Prairie Potato School Webinar and Get
FREE Organic Long Pie Pumpkin Seed.
Now
is the season for pumpkin pie and the best pumpkin
pie is made from the wonderful heirloom
known as Organic
Long Pie Pumpkin. Reliable – even in short-season
northern Maine - we grow the seed for this remarkable
heirloom. Long
Pie has been steadily gaining deserved recognition both
for its superb taste and its smooth texture.
Attend our first
FREE Wood Prairie Potato
School Webinar (see previous article)
and as a bonus
we’ll send you a FREE
packet of our Organic
Long Pie Pumpkin seed. That way, next Summer you
can grow your own Long Pie crop in plenty of time to prepare delicious
Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.
Receive your FREE Packet of Wood Prairie
Farm Organic Long Pie Pumpkin Seed (Value $3.50) when you
attend Wood
Prairie Potato School Webinar Session #1
(details
above).
After registering for the FREE
Webinar, just send an email
to
orders@woodprairie.com and include Promo Code WPF 477 in the subject line.
In the email tell us your name, snail mail address and email address.
Then - after the conclusion of the Webinar - we’ll snail-mail to you
your FREE
packet of Organic Long
Pie Pumpkin Seed. Offer Expires
11:59p.m., Monday, December 14, so please don’t delay!
Click
Here for Our Organic Wood Prairie Farm Vegetable Seed.
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Must Read article in Excellent New Food Economy. Local
Maine food for University of Maine System.
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New
Food Economy - A Stunning New FREE Web Outlet.
New
Food Economy is a top shelf - remarkably enough,
FREE
- web resource which provides extremely apt and well-written articles
on themes central to new wave food and farms, that is, the “New Food
Economy.”
The energy behind New
Food Economy is formidable as well as articulate.
It was founded by our friend, Jeffrey Kittay, until recently associated
with operations behind the Portland Press Herald
empire. Corby Kummer, longtime editor at The Atlantic is
also an Editor at New
Food Economy. Corby traveled to our farm one
Fall day about 15 years ago and wrote a
piece which appeared in The
Atlantic. An abridged
version later also appeared in Corby’s iconic book, The
Pleasures of Slow Food.
One
recent incisive New
Food Economy article dives into the
bold
attempt by home-grown Maine
Farm & Sea Co-operative – of which we
are enthusiastic members - to win the contract to supply students at
the University of Maine System with healthy
local food. The article is well-researched and
adeptly explains how Maine Farm & Sea Co-operative has approached this
well-nigh-impossible task by carefully building a team
with substantial depth and capacity. They have recruited
highly-motivated individuals with stellar careers and extraordinary
background in institutional food services.
By reading just this one
single article about Maine Farm & Sea, one gains an
understanding of the powerful journalism New Food Economy
represents. Long overdue, New Food Economy is
the
find of the year.
Jim & Megan
Click
Here for our Wood Prairie Farm Organic Specialty Potatoes for the
Kitchen.
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Steven
Druker, Author of Altered Genes
Twisted Truth.
Powerful Keynote at MOFGA's Common Ground Fair. |
Notable Quote: Napoléon on Incompetence.
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Recipe: Christmas
Cranberry Sauce with Carmelized Onions.
Yields 2-1/2 to 3 cups
1 T vegetable or sunflower oil
1 large yellow
onion, cut into medium dice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Sea
salt and freshly ground black pepper
One 12 oz bag fresh or thawed frozen cranberries, rinsed and
picked over
1 c granulated sugar
In a 10 inch straight-sided
saute pan or skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions,
cloves, a pinch of salt and a grind or two of pepper. Reduce the heat
to low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are
golden-brown and very soft, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the lid, increase
the heat to medium high, and cook the onions, stirring often, until
deep caramel-brown, an additional 2 to 3 minutes.
Add the cranberries,
sugar, a pinch of salt and 1/2 c water and bring to a simmer over
medium-high heat. Simmer for 1 minutes, then cover, turn off heat and
let cool to room temperature.
This wonderful sauce may be prepared up to 3 days ahead and
refrigerated.
-Megan
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Christmas
Cranberry Sauce.
A delicious variation of traditional cranberry
sauce .
Photo by Angela Wotton.
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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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