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- Click on Photos to Enlarge -
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The Day After We Finish Planting on Wood Prairie Family Farm.
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After delays from rain and a halting, cool
Spring, we finally finished planting our crops yesterday. That means that this morning we took at
picking rocks from our fields of Organic
Maine Certified Seed Potatoes.
What we pick by hand are the rocks - grapefruit-sized and up - which
have the ability to bust up equipment.
By the mud on the tires and adhering to the rocks themselves, you can
see that we continue to face wet conditions, here in Northern Maine.
In the photo above, Justin (orange shirt)
covers eight rows at a time and helps throw rocks into the Dump Cart. In the distance, Caleb, using a second bucket
tractor and five-foot crowbar fights with a good sized rock well-hidden and
discovered lurking in a planted Beneficial
Insect Flower bed.
This
issue of the Wood Prairie Seed Piece includes a new Maine Tales, entitled “Population Explosion,” a little
history lesson we hope you will enjoy.
Also, please take advantage of our Offer
for FREE Organic Herb Seed. Plus, Megan shares her Recipe for “Sunburst Carrot Salad.” As well, Thomas
Jefferson shares his thoughts about Agriculture in a NEW Notable
Quotes.
If
you haven’t yet ordered Organic Seed, you still
have time to plant your Garden and a crop of Potatoes and we have the Organic Seed for you! We still have a good supply on most of our Organic Seed Potato varieties.
Stay
cool - and thanks for your business and support!
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Special Offer! FREE Organic Herb Seed!
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Place a New Order and Receive these Four FREE Packets of Organic Herb Seed ($15.96) with a Minimum $65 Order. FREE Herb Seed must ship with order and no later than 06/30/2023. Please use Coupon Code WPFF270.
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Maine Tales.
Population Explosion.
Township
D, Range 2. Circa 2001.
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Maine's Population in 2000: 1,274,923.. Statewide, Maine’s
population grew at a humble rate of 3.4% from 1990 to 2000. In
general terms, the Coast showed the fastest growth, and the rural North lost
population. The closure of Loring
Air Force Base in Limestone, near Caribou, in 1994 delivered a serious blow
both economically and in terms of population.
There was, however, one Unorganized Township which tried its best to
reverse Aroostook County’s decline.
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"Figures will
not lie, but liars will figure."
This phrase has been attributed to a
Maine politician, James G. Blaine who, after the Civil War served as Speaker of
the U.S. House of Representatives, and then later as a U.S. Senator. Senator
Blaine made no claim of original authorship and one variation on the theme
has been long attributed to Samuel Clemons, aka Mark Twain. Essentially, preventing a liar from figuring
signifies an effort to prevent a perversion of truth.
Constitutional Matters
Our founders, after the American Revolution,
had figured out that representative democracy requires honest and accurate numbers. In June 1788, the proposed United States
Constitution became ratified by the States, and contained therein was the new Constitutional requirement that
there be a regular head-count of all inhabitants. So, beginning in 1790, the first Census was
conducted, and this Constitutionally-mandated procedure has been followed every
decade ever since.
As documented by the Census, our little Potato
farming town of Bridgewater saw its population rise to around 1200 in 1890,
just after the railroad line first came through. The population stabilized around that 1200
figure for six decades until the 1950s when
the year-round automobile era accelerated mobility and the ability to get out
of Dodge. So began in this area a steady
slide in the number of residents. Bridgewater’s population then stabilized for
the two decades counted and reported in the Census of 2000 and 2010, settling at
just over 600. The most recent Census in
2020 indicated that we had dropped once again, this time down to 532
souls. That leaves Bridgewater with its
smallest population since the Civil War era.
Our perennially challenged Northern Maine Potato and Woods-based economy
has left its mark in the form of a limited ability to hold onto our young
people, a tale sadly often told in rural America.
Maine's Townships
Of all the fifty States, Maine has been
recognized as having the oldest median population in the country. Among Maine’s 483 organized Townships, and
primarily because of that youth out-migration, the Bridgewater citizenry represents one of the oldest median age
populations in the entire State of Maine.
Late to the party, Northern Maine decades ago began joining most rural
areas up and down the Eastern seaboard which have experienced a pattern of
dwindling population since the close of the Civil War. Maine’s overall very modest statewide
population growth over past decades should be attributed to Portland and the
Coast which have grown in population at a rate faster than the out-migration
from Maine’s rural hinterlands.
Now,
in addition to the 483 Organized Townships in Maine, there are another 429
townships which are so sparsely or completely unpopulated that they have been
lumped together administratively by the State as Maine’s “Unorganized Territory
(UT).”
The UT represents slightly over half of Maine’s land area and currently
has about 9,000 year-round residents.
Because our Wood Prairie Family Farm homes and farm buildings are
located in the UT adjacent to the Township of Bridgewater, and despite the fact
that we own and farm nearby land in the Township of Bridgewater, as far as the
State of Maine is concerned, our family is considered to be residents of
Township D Range 2. TDR2 is a part of
the UT which makes up the massive, lonesome North Maine woods. There is no local organized government.
Green Land & Pink Land
The US Census of 1990 correctly captured
the fact that TDR2 at that time had just four residents: Wood Prairie’s Megan & Jim, and another
couple with a camp on a woodlot south of us.
Then jump ahead ten years. Population changes which had occurred over
those next ten years were counted and then released as 2000 Census figures by
the Census Bureau in 2001. The state’s largest newspaper, the Bangor
Daily News, made a quite a hoopla of the 2000 Census and in June ran a
big story about Maine population trends.
Accompanying this article was a giant, full-page, detailed color map of
the State of Maine divided into its many hundreds of Townships. Townships were
painstakingly color coded to indicate percentage population change over the previous
ten years. Pinks were splattered down
around Portland, Bangor and the Coast, indicative of their population growth.
However, virtually all of Western, Northern
and Eastern Maine were solemnly etched in various shades of greens, soberly
documenting the continuing exodus from rural Maine. Yet,
there amidst the map’s massive forest of depopulating green was this single,
unmistakable, square-sided outlier beacon of red. It was a Township way up north in Aroostook County,
in the second range of Townships westward from Canada. The use of a magnifying glass illuminated the
Township’s four clear characters: TDR2. Yes,
that would be us.
Boom Town
Amazingly enough, amid all the complication
and paper shuffling involved in Census-taking, the Census Bureau had got it right
in their tally. The first three of our
four children - Peter, Caleb and Sarah - had all been born during that single
decade following the 1990 Census. Reminiscent
of Klondike boom towns, the population of TDR2 had statistically exploded,
rocketing from four to seven, or a gain of 75%!
It was enough growth to earn our Township the rare-as-hen’s-teeth coded
color ‘red.’
Miraculously, our 35-square-mile TDR2 was able to handle that historic population
surge. Turns out, having five-square-miles per resident is just
about the right population density, and still gives us the elbow room we like
to have.
Jim
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Megan's Kitchen Recipes: Sunburst Carrot Salad.
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1 Bunch of Chantenay Carrots
1 Medium Lancer Parsnip
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Fine Grain Sea Salt
1 Green Chile (serrano), deveined and minced
1 Lemon, zest and juice
1 Cup Santo Cilantro, chopped
1 Cup green Pumpkin seeds (pepitas), toasted
Wash the carrots and parsnip. Use a vegetable peeler to shave carrots
and parsnips into wide ribbons.
Heat a big splash of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add
a big pinch of salt and stir in the vegetable ribbons. Saute for 30
seconds or so - barely long enough to take the raw edge and a bit of
crunch off the carrots and parsnip. Quickly stir in the chiles and
lemon zest. Remove from heat and stir in the cilantro, about one
tablespoon of lemon juice, and then most of the pepitas. Taste. Add
more salt and/or lemon juice if needed. Garnish with remaining pepitas.
Serves 4 to 6.
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Notable Quote: Jefferson on Agriculture.
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Quick Links to
Popular Products.
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Caleb & Jim & Megan Gerritsen
Wood Prairie Family Farm
49 Kinney Road
Bridgewater, Maine 04735
(207) 429 - 9765 / 207
(429) - 9682
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