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Early
Potatoes. Date When Planting Begins. Circa 1920.
USDA map shows when planting begins East of the Rocky Mountains. West
of the
Rockies, variations in altitude prohibit drawing of isochronal lines.
Click on Map
to Enlarge
Early
Planting.
A few days ago I spoke with one of our farmers in
northern
Georgia who is right now harvesting a beautiful crop of potatoes he
planted back in August and called to order new seed for his Spring
potato crop. Our own harvest here in northern Maine ended just six
weeks ago. Yet, hard as it is to believe in the North, the new season
is upon us. Early potato planting is now going on in Florida,
California
and beyond.
We thought you might enjoy this vintage
USDA Early
Potatoes
map above taken from one of our old 1920's potato books. Click
here
for
the full size map located on our
website. And yes it's not too
early to
think about
planting potatoes wherever you are. Order now and we'll ship whenever
you want
them.
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Friday,
December 3, 2010
Wood
Prairie Farm Seed Piece
Newsletter
Organic
News and
Commentary
This
Issue:
We have been unusually busy this Fall shipping
out
seed potatoes. We're also gearing up for the busy gift and
food
season
peak in this next three week lead up to Christmas. Be on the
lookout
for our Wood Prairie Christmas Gift Guide which we'll be
emailing
out
to you next week. In
the meantime
if
you need good organic seed or food or gifts let
us know how we can help you.
Jim & Megan
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Recipe:
Maine
Potato Candies.
Also
known as Needhams, the widespread belief in these parts is that Maine
Potato Candies originated here in the potato country of northern
Maine. You'll often find recipes for Needhams in old time
Maine
cookbooks.
And
what could be better and richer than chocolate, coconut and potatoes! Megan
3/4 cup of mashed Elba
(or equivalent) potatoes
2
lbs
of powdered Sugar
1/4 lb of butter
1/2 pound flaked coconut (about 2+ cups)
2 tsp vanilla
Pare, cook and mash the potatoes to
make 3/4 cup.
In a double
broiler on top of the stove, melt the butter over boiling water. Add
the mashed potato, powdered sugar, flaked coconut and vanilla. Mix
well. Spread the mixture evenly in a buttered cookie sheet. Place in a
cool place to harden - such as a cool garage. When hard, cut the
mixture
into small squares for dipping in the chocolate.
Chocolate Dip
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cake paraffin wax
Melt the paraffin in the bowl of a
double broiler.
Add the
chocolates and melt. Stir well. Dip the Needham squares in the
chocolate with a toothpick and place on waxed paper to harden. Makes 66
good-sized Needhams. The recipe may be cut in half.
Click
here for Wood Prairie Organic Kitchen Potatoes
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Maine Potato
Candies
Photo
by Angela Wotton
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Organic
Fish Meal Fertilizer.
FREE Fish
Fertilizer Offer
|
Special
Offer: FREE Organic Fish Meal Fertilizer.
One of the best things
about farming here in Maine nowadays is our
proximity to the Gulf of Maine coast where waste leftover from fish
processing makes for wonderful fertilizer. We've been using fish meal
fertilizer on Wood Prairie Farm for many years. While we ran out of
room for Fish Meal in this year's catalog you'll find it in the Organic
fertilizer
section of our webstore.
Now here's
your chance to earn a FREE
3 pound
bag of Organic Fish Meal Fertilizer
($9.95 value) with your next purchase of Organic
Seed Potatoes and/or Organic
Garden Vegetable Seed that
totals $55 or more.
Please use Promo Code 1013. FREE
Organic
Fish Meal
Fertilizer. Order must ship by May 13, 2011. Hurry! FREE
Fish
Fertilizer Offer ends Monday 12/6/10 and can not be combined with other
offers. Please call or click today!
Click
here for Wood Prairie Farm Organic Fertilizer
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Update:
Organic Wins
Again! Illegal GMO
Beets Ordered Destroyed!
In
August a Federal
District court ruling made planting GMO Sugar Beets illegal (See
story in the August 20 Seed Piece).
Barely one month later in
September, the USDA attempted to circumvent that August court ruling
via the ruse of issuing GMO Sugar Beet steckling (plant) planting
permits. In
response to that bald defiant action, Organic Seed Alliance, its
allies, and the Center for Food Safety and Earth Justice filed suit in
Federal District Court (See
story in the September 19 Seed Piece)
seeking to stop the USDA and
their partner, biotech giant Monsanto.
New
Ruling
A
landmark Court ruling
was handed down last Tuesday November 30. The organic community was
given an unequivocal solid victory when Federal District Court Judge
Jeffrey S. White ruled that the USDA had acted illegally in their
permitting scheme. In a sharply worded rebuke Judge White issued a
preliminary injunction and ordered the immediate destruction of 256
acres of gene-spliced RR Sugar Beet stecklings.
Court
Order Excerpts
In
breathtaking manor here are some scathing excerpts from Judge White's
Tuesday Court Order:
"To the extent Defendants [USDA-APHIS]
and
Intervenor-Defendants [Monsanto] contend that they would suffer any
harm, it is only of their own doing. Due to their preemptive conduct,
the stecklings have been planted pursuant to the permits at issue and
they have created a significant risk of environmental harm....The
likely environmental harm established by Plaintiffs [Organic Seed
Alliance] is irreparable....In light of Plaintiffs' strong showing of
likely irreparable harm and Defendants' and Intervenor-Defendants' weak
showing of harm, the balance of equities tips sharply in favor of the
Plaintiffs....the Court finds that the harm of which Defendants and
Defendant-Intervenors now complain was caused by the Court's prior
orders and their own delay....The Court further finds that neither
Defendants nor Intervenor-Defendants have any cause to claim surprise
as a result of any injunction....the Court finds that the balance of
hardships between the parties and the public interest tips sharply in
favor of the Plaintiffs and in favor of issuing an injunction....to the
extent the requested injunction is a mandatory injunction, Defendants
and Intervenor-Defendants created this problem...Based on the record
currently before the Court, the legality of Defendants' conduct does
not even appear to be a close question. It appears clear that
Defendants and Intervenor-Defendants were merely seeking to avoid the
impact of the Court's prior order in Sugar Beets I....the
Court....HEREBY ORDERS that the stecklings planted pursuant to the
permits issued by the Defendants shall be removed from the ground."
Seminal
Victory
Center
for Food
Safety Senior Staff Attorney George Kimbrell said, "today's court
decision is a seminal victory for farmers and the environment and a
vindication of the rule of law. The public interest has prevailed over
USDA's repeated efforts to implement the unlawful demands of the
biotech industry."
Click
here for more background on the court ruling from CFS.
In related news, today, Friday December
3, Monsanto
said it will appeal the Federal Court decision.
Old
Habits Die Hard
The
USDA is a
slow learner. In a related story on the Organic Seed Alliance website,
December 6 is the end of a brief Comment Period on the USDA's
inadequate Draft Environmental Assessment, a mechanism USDA is using to
try and again railroad through RR Sugar Beets prior to the completion
of the thorough Environmental Impact Statement required by the Court. I
urge you to read
the background by OSA and submit comments by the deadline
to
counter Monsanto's well-financed public relations campaign.
Your
Contribution Is Needed Now
While
on
the Organic
Seed Alliance
website I encourage you to make
a generous financial contribution
to support the
good work of OSA. As a Board member and former President of OSA, I can
tell you that our three year RR Sugar Beet legal battle with USDA has
been a tremendous strain on our resources and our ability to do all
of our important organic seed work. Your financial support is very much
needed now and it is very much appreciated! Thanks!
Jim
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Update:
Senate
Passes Good Food Safety Bill.
Family farm advocates celebrated the US
Senate's
passage of the
Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) last Tuesday November 30. With
wide bipartisan support the bill passed the Senate 73-25. Kept intact
were amendments important to family scale operations including the
Tester Amendment. That amendment, sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester, an
organic beef farmer from Montana, exempts small farmers from new
controls if they sell directly to consumers and have annual sales of
less than $500,000. The House passed its own version of the Food Safety
bill (H.R.2749) in July 2009. However the House version lacks the
scale-appropriate measures inserted into the Senate bill. The Senate
bill now goes to the House for action. Click
here for a good Food
Safety bill summary compiled by our friends at Organic Farming Research
Foundation.
Click here for the Food Safety bill article in the November 19 Seed
Piece
newsletter.
Our
Mailbox:
Thanksgiving.
Hi Megan,
Wanted to let you know that I am
grateful for Wood
Prairie Farm's
commitment to the planet. I am very grateful for the Seed Piece
newsletter, your
catalog and certainly all you do for potatoes!!!
Wishing you all a
wonderful Thanksgiving day.
MM
Leesburg FL
Happy Thanksgiving to your whole family.
We appreciate all your efforts towards
organic
gardening and your
involvement in trying to promote farming methods in line with the
natural ways we know are best. The ways of Monsanto could realistically
endanger the planet and our seed stock that we count on for survival.
We support your great efforts. Also, I really like your website and
enjoy the human touch that comes through. Feels like you are friends we
just have not met yet.
Last but not least, we are enjoying
potatoes that
we grew here in
Northern California from your stock. They are just the best tasting
most
delicious ever. Your family offers such fine products, we look forward
to trying some of your other offerings. The whole organic grains,
access to organic corn products, premade bread mixes, awesome!!!
Best to you,
HR
Sebastopol CA
Click
here for the Wood Prairie Home Page
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The MOF
& G Newspaper
Winter
2010-2011 Edition
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Observations
From
35 Years of Watching the
Maine Organic Community
Grow.
The
Winter 2010-2011 issue of the Maine
Organic Farmer & Gardener newspaper
is now at newsstands
across the State of Maine. Included in this Winter issue is the upbeat
Keynote
Speech "Observations From 35 Years of Watching the Maine Organic
Community Grow" given last September at the Common Ground Country Fair
by Wood Prairie Farm's Jim Gerritsen. If you're in Maine, you can pick
up a copy of this excellent newspaper. Click
here to read Jim's speech in the
electronic version of the Winter
2010-2011 MOF
& G located
on the MOFGA
website.
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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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