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Wood
Prairie Farm
In This
Issue of The Seed Piece:
Christmas in Maine.
Katahdin (elev 5268'). View from the East. Northern
Maine Icon.
Maine's highest peak and nothern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
Wishing you and your family
a merry and warm Christmas.
Jim &
Megan Gerritsen & Family
Wood
Prairie Farm
Bridgewater,
Maine
Click here for the
Wood Prairie Farm Home Page
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Maine
Tales.
Katahdin: A Land
Apart.
Sherman, Circa 1937.
Without
question, the
undisputed monolithic icon of northern
Maine is Katahdin. The coast has lighthouses as their
beacons. Rising
from the Maine woods we have Katahdin. Both
are there to guide. While Katahdin is seventy miles southwest of
Wood
Prairie Farm, the mountain is so prominent that it's top can be seen in
this
region
on clear days from
our highest hills and peaks.
Katahdin
Travels
Last week I had an
organic meeting in central
Maine and drove south along I-95 past Katahdin to get there. This 115
mile
stretch between Houlton and Bangor took ninety minutes to drive.
Back two
hundred years ago it took Indians and pioneers two weeks of canoe
paddling to
complete a similar journey.
Earlier in
the week northern Maine had been clobbered with a storm that dropped up
to a foot or two of snow. As often happens, the
deepest snow fell in
the Katahdin valley – the sparsely populated townships near
Katahdin and the area
whose weather is seriously impacted by the impressive Katahdin.
Driving
down early, the morning was calm,
crystal clear and hovering around zero. The snow had been wet and the
days
since the storm had been uncharacteristically windless so clinging now
solidly
frozen to the boughs of the spruce and fir trees was a 4-5 inch layer
of
pristine white snow, every bit as perfect and unbelievable as a
painting on a
Leanin’ Tree Christmas card. The
snow on
the highway shoulder was piled deepest as I approached the southern
boundary of
northern Maine – that would be the Penobscot River
– where our familiar land
ends and that different world begins. One
of our
last towns this side of the Penobscot and staring right into
Katahdin is Sherman, Maine, a small outpost in the Maine woods.
One Room Schoolhouse
Years ago
we had a
friend who as a new teacher taught in a one room schoolhouse in Sherman
in the
shadow of Katahdin back in the 1920s and 1930s. Twenty five students,
K- Grade 8,
ages five to fifteen, three foot to six foot tall, all crowded into a
thinly
boarded mightily spare wood building, lacking insulation and outfitted
with an
almost adequate woodstove. There was
nothing between the schoolhouse door and the breathtaking view of
Katahdin
except for some fast moving air. When it was snowing outside and the
wind was blowing a gale it was also snowing inside that bare little
schoolhouse.
Like
most northern Maine towns Sherman was a
woods township with the cleared ground planted to potatoes and oats.
While unique
to northern Maine but common to the Katahdin valley, Sherman also had
farms
where dairy was bigger and potatoes was smaller, due to the
fact
that as you get away from the sandy loams up north comprising the
center of the
Potato Empire, the cleared ground was not as well-drained or early and
therefore
more fit for growing sod for hay and pasture.
Pronouncing Katahdin
Now, most
any place
pronunciation is independent and unruly. Subtleties
are embedded in local dialect. Take
“Katahdin” for instance. It’s
an Indian word which means “Greatest Mountain”, which
explains why we
don’t call it Mount Katahdin (Mount Greatest Mountain is way too
many words for a
northern Mainer). Maine is quite partial to bestowing its iconic names
on
creations that are a source of pride. Of course, there’s
Katahdin hair sheep. Then when the era’s best potato variety
came along, it
just seemed to make sense when it was released in 1932 to call it
“Katahdin”
(You’ll find our Onaway
potato has Katahdin in its parentage).
Fact is,
Mainers
are particularly brutal when it comes to handling
‘Rs’. Folks
down along the coast tend to lose them
(Bar Harbor sounds out as "Baa Haabaa"). Folks
up here in northern Maine tend to grab them floating
‘Rs’
and stick ‘em onto words to make the process of speaking go
along faster
(“Goin’ down to Auguster,”
“Headin’ up to Madawasker”). The upshot
is we have a
short season in northern Maine and there’s no point wasting
time saying out real
long words when a short version would do just fine. Nowadays,
we’d allow that
Katahdin is still spoken every day in Maine potato country
conversations (“Got
me a load of Katahdins to put up the fore noon,” “Naw,
them Superiors not nearly as late as a Katahdin,”
“That one
thar don’t take to blight near as quick as Katahdins”).
So for many reasons
there’s a pile of practice and daily experience behind the
northern Maine pronunciation of Katahdin.
Without any
pride
of mastery the original Katahdin of three syllables has been reduced
down a tad to about one and a half. A well placed ‘R’ shortens up
that tedious (‘tedjus’) long
middle syllable. Phonetically speaking, 'Ktardun'
(Note: no pauses; quick start with a forceful ‘Kt’
sound; must
be spoken fast, as though you’re in a hurry, after all
winter is always
on the way).
School Days
Here in
Maine back
before World War II, schools started up in November after cold weather
brought the farming
season to an end. School continued through winter ‘til mud
season in the Spring,
allowing families to gear up for the farming season once the mud dried
up. Well,
the 1920s had been real good years and then the thirties were very very
tough. To help
their families make ends
meet most of the boys in Sherman school ran traplines for beaver and
fox
pelts. They’d
tend these traplines
before school and show up at the schoolhouse laden with pack baskets
full of
pelts
and traps and of course snowshoes, rifles and knives.
The
pelts and snowshoes were parked outside leaned up against the
schoolhouse. By
negotiation and mutual
agreement the guns, knives and traps were stowed under the
teacher’s desk. These
were an outdoor people and these
were outdoor kids. Katahdin was their constant companion. Katahdin
was their guidepost in the woods and
the center of their frigid world.
The Outside World
Back in
the
1930s
in places like Sherman, electric power lines to farms were still
decades away. But the
invention of battery powered radios
brought to folks in Sherman and rural America the new option of a
revolutionary
glimpse into the wide outside world through radio broadcasts. Three
generations ago the most famous radio
personality was the renowned world traveler and story teller Lowell
Thomas. Beginning
in 1930, his regular national radio
broadcast “Lowell Thomas and the News” carried on
NBC and CBS, continued for
almost five decades. Lowell brought into view
foreign
places like Cairo, Cripple Creek and Katmandu. To backwoods Maine
school kids
who’d never imagined venturing away from home, adventurer Lowell Thomas
came to possess
god-like status and gravitas. That is,
until the day Lowell's story telling brought him to northern Maine.
Blow after Blow
Most
of Lowell’s listeners didn’t realize it but he was
what’s known as a “cold
reader”. He would
most often read scripts
live on the air that someone else had written without ever having
pre-read the
text. And most times he performed impeccably as the master story teller.
Well,
one day Lowell’s subject turned out to
be the wilds of northern Maine. With
Sherman ears attentive like never before, his story unfolded. He soon
made
reference to Katahdin, royally mispronouncing it repeatedly as
‘Mount
Cat-ta-din’ and kept right on a-readin' the script in complete
and total
oblivion to his
stunning blow after blow of error. At the first blunder every jaw in
Sherman dropped. From five
year old listener on up there was instantaneous
shock in Sherman: this god of the radio waves rambling along
didn’t know what the
heck he was talking about.
Cold Winter Day
It
had been a cold winter day in Sherman. The
kids
in Sherman got a big real world education they hadn’t
bargained for when they
crawled out of bed that morning. At
the
end of the day some of their innocence was left behind. Yet they were
now a notch
wiser to the ways of the outside world. And maybe just a little more
hesitant
to cross over to that far shore of the Penobscot River.
Jim
[A version of this 'Maine Tales'
originally appeared in the Dec 17, 2010 Seed Piece]
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Jim Gerritsen to Give Keynote at
Slow Money National Gathering
Our
friends at Slow Money
are putting together
an event that many of you will not want to miss on April
29-30 in Boulder, Colorado. Slow Money is
focused on fixing the economy from the ground up... starting with food.
The April event will be their fourth National Gathering and the first three have
launched
national activity that holds great promise for all of us who want to
see our
food system transformed. At their first three national gatherings, $6
million
was invested in 21 of the presenting enterprises. In addition, 17
Chapters
around the country have facilitated $15 million of investing at the
local
level.
Slow Money in Maine.
Slow
Money Maine is one of the most active Slow Money chapters
and it has
become an effective game-changing network.
Since it was founded just two-and-one-half
years ago, over $4 million has
been used to help develop farming in Maine
including $1.9 million in loans, $1.5 million in grants and $600,000 in
equity
investment. That $1.9 million loan
figure distills down to twenty-one loans (Disclosure: we are one of the
21 farms) in amounts ranging from
$2,500-$55,000. What’s more, steady
progress is being made in creating a brand new member-owned non-profit
state-chartered Maine Farm & Food Credit
Union to serve members of the Maine
Organic Farmers and Gardeners Assn and Maine
Farmland Trust by providing working capital to farmers and food
enterprises, and a means by which Mainers can deposit their savings
into an
insured institution and know that their money is being used to support
sound right
activity in their local food community.
Speakers At Slow
Money Gathering.
Confirmed speakers include Carlo
Petrini (founder of Slow Food); Mary Berry
(Wendell Berry's daughter
who is leading the charge for the newly established Berry Center); Wes Jackson (MacArthur Fellow and
founder of The Land Institute); Winona
LaDuke (Renowned activist and Executive Director of Honor the
Earth); Jeff
Clements (author of Corporations
Are Not People), Joan Gussow
(Author of This Organic Life);
Gary Nabhan
(MacArthur Fellow, prolific author, and leader of the local
food movement.); and Jim Gerritsen
(co-owner of Wood Prairie Farm and President of Organic Seed Growers
and Trade
Association, lead Plaintiff in OSGATA
et al v. Monsanto).
Make Your Plans To
Attend Now!
The
first 100 tickets
sold by December 31st will be offered at a discount. So act now! Hope
to see you in Boulder!
Click
here to find out more and to
register for the 2013 Slow Money National Gathering.
Jim & Megan
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Ever Wonder Where the Mercury in
Fish
Comes From?
Yes, most mercury pollution comes from the burning of fossil
fuels like coal, but some does come from the after effects of
mining. This accompanying graphic from Grist illustrates the
story.
To gain further background you can read the article
in Grist.
Jim
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The Source of
Mercury in Fish. Click to enlarge graphic.
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Thomas Jefferson. Farmer
and President.
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Advice From a Former President.
Our third President, Thomas Jefferson, has some good advice we should
keep in mind.
“If people let the government decide what
foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be
in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny.”
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for
people of good conscience to remain silent.”
Click here
for the latest on Organic Seed
Growers and Trade Association et al v. Monsanto.
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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.
A
delicious variation of traditional Cranberry sauce.
Photo by Angela Wotton
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FREE
Offer: Maine Potato Sampler
of the Month -
In time for
Christmas!
There's still
time if you act now! Our organic Maine
Potato
Sampler of the Month Club is our most popular product and this time
of
year we ship them out all over the country.
Special
Offer. If you order an 8-Month or 5-Month club now - as a gift
to a loved one or for yourself - we'll
guarantee that your first Potato
Sampler will arrive in time for
Christmas dinner! FREE Air
Shipping upgrade to ensure your Christmas Potato Sampler will
arrive safe and on time.
Please use Promo Code WPF1136. Offer
ends Thursday
December 20, 2012 at 1:45 pm Eastern. Applies to the 48 states
only. Can not be combined with other
offers. Please call or click today!
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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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