University of Maine Cooperative Extension
WALDO COUNTY HOME | COUNTY OFFICES | PROGRAMS | RESOURCES | PUBLICATIONS | WHAT'S NEWS | UMAINE EXTENSION HOME  | UMAINE

Extension Perspectives

                      Waldo County Cooperative Extension's Monthly Newsletter                        

CALENDAR

Doing Business Radio Show

Thursday 10am - 11am

May 1   (1st Thursday of every month)

“Buying Locally” WERU 89.9/102.9 FM   Live broadcast encourages listeners to phone the station with comments, reactions, & questions.

MOFGA’S  Orchards Workshop

Saturday

May 10

Call 568-4142 or MOFGA.org for details

WCEA  Executive Committee Meeting

Monday 6:15 pm

May 12 (2nd Monday of every month)

University of Maine Cooperative Extension

992 Waterville Rd, Waldo.  Public welcome

 Northeast Livestock Expo

Friday—Sunday

May 16-18 Windsor Fairgrounds

www.maine.gov.agriculture/livestockexpo/

Waldo County Homemaker’s Council Advisory Board Meeting

Monday   9am

May 12

Pasture Walk

Friday 2pm-4pm

May 23 Benton

Longmeadows Farm, Benton - Xandy Brown's farm, where Dr. Beth McEvoy will teach participants various techniques for dehorning and castrating calves, including the use of lidocaine in dehorning.  Some hands-on opportunities.  Dr. McEvoy, a veterinarian with the Foxcroft Veterinary services, will also discuss appropriate vaccination techniques.  Longmeadows Farm is the yellow farm at 184 Unity Rd in Benton.  Contact Xandy at 873-5212 or  xandy@longmeadowsfarm.com

Small Farm Field Day

Saturday 9am - 4pm

May 31   MOFGA , Unity

MOFGA's Common Ground Education Center. A day of free workshops and demonstrations for farmers, gardeners and homesteaders.

Maine Fiber Frolic

Saturday-Sunday 10am-4pm

June 7-8 Windsor Fairgrounds

Maine farm days

Friday-Saturday

August 15-16          Misty Meadows Farm, Clinton

Safe Water for Emergencies

Adapted from University of Maine Cooperative Extension Bulletin #9031

Spring floods, heavy snow melts and rains can disturb and disrupt the quality of water from your well.  Disasters can both disrupt the electricity needed to pump water in to your home and contaminate the water supply.  Plan ahead to be sure you have enough safe water for drinking, making food, brushing teeth, and keeping clean.

Storing Water

You can store water ahead for use in emergencies.  Boiled water stored in sterilized containers will keep for six months to one year.  While the water may taste flat, it is safe to drink or use in cooking.

Water from the Hot Water Heater

Your hot water heater or water pressure tank could supply many gallons of safe water during an emergency.  Before using water from the   water heater, switch off the gas or electricity that heats the water.  Leaving the power on while the heater is empty could cause an explosion or burn out the elements.  After turning off the power source, open the drain valve at the bottom of the tank.  Do not turn the water heater on again until the water system is back in service.

If your well has been flooded or surface water has entered your well, the water needs to be treated with shot chlorination.  (Call our office to get Extension bulletin #7115, “Bacteria in Water Supplies, Part 2: How to Disinfect Your Well.”)

Disinfecting Water

Unless you are absolutely certain your water supply is not contaminated, purify all water before using it for drinking, preparing food, brushing teeth, or washing dishes.  If the water contains sediment or floating material, strain it through a cloth before purifying it.  If you have access to heat or power, water can be made safe by boiling.  If not, you will have to treat it with chemicals.

Boiling (preferred method):  Boil water at a rolling boil for 10 minutes to kill any disease-causing bacteria.

Chemical Treatment:  If you can’t boil water, chemical treatment will kill most disease-causing organisms.  Any of the following three chemical treatments will purify water:

Chlorine bleach.  Household bleach is a good disinfectant for water.  Before using, check the label to be sure hypochlorite is the only active ingredient in the bleach.  Do not use bleach that contains soap.  Since the amount of chlorine in bleach is variable, use the following table to determine the appropriate amount needed to purify water.  Mix the bleach thoroughly in the water and let it stand for 30 minutes.  The water should have a slight chlorine odor.  If it doesn’t, repeat the dose and let it stand for an additional 15 minutes.

Percent Chlorine Add per Gallon of Water

1%          40 drops

2 to 6%   8 drops

7 to 10%   4 drops

Iodine.  Household iodine from the medicine cabinet will purify water.  The iodine should be 2 percent United States Pharmacopoeia (U.S.P.) strength.  Add 20 drops per gallon of clear water and 40 drops per gallon of cloudy water.

Water purification tablets.  Water purification tablets will also purify water.  These tablets are available at drug stores.  Follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Source:  Be Prepared with a 3-Day Emergency Food Supply, by E. Schafer, C. Hans, E. Jones Beavers and D. Nelson, Iowa State University Cooperative Extension.  November, 1997.  Reviewed by Jon Jemison, Extension water quality specialist.

Wild Blueberry Integrated Crop Management

Field Training Sessions

Field training sessions will be offered at three locations to demonstrate and discuss the Integrated Crop Management (ICM) field scouting techniques in Wild Blueberry Fact Sheet No. 204. The first and second sessions will cover mummyberry and blossom blight identification and monitoring, insect sweeping and identification, and weed identification and management. The third session will cover blueberry maggot fly trapping, leaf and soil sampling, and weed identification and management.

David E. Yarborough, Extension Blueberry Specialist

One recertification credit per session will be offered for certified pesticide applicators.

Maine Senior Farm Share

Still has FREE produce shares available for income eligible seniors.  The free produce shares , worth $50 each are a great way to support income eligible seniors with fresh local produce.  The shares are available at approximately 80 farms.

A Farm Share is $50 worth (at no charge to you) of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs during the growing season. To take part in the Senior Farm Share program you must:

☼ Be a Maine resident, 60 years old or older (55 if Native American)

☼ Not be an immediate family member or live in the same household as the farmer

☼ Meet the income guidelines

Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association

MOFGA Article For Reprinting - April 15, 2008

Plant Peas: It's Patriotic
by Russell Libby

Executive Director, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners

Copyright - The Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association, 2008

If you want peas for the Fourth of July, it's almost time to plant! Many Maine gardeners use Patriots' Day as the traditional planting date. Peas are one of the first vegetables that can be planted in the Spring because they grow well in cool soils.

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) encourages you to take a step towards food independence this month by planting a row -- or two! -- of peas. The three basic types you can grow are shell peas, snow peas, and sugarsnaps. Shell peas are opened (shelled) so you can get the peas out of the pods. These are the traditional pea varieties grown in New England. Snow pea pods are harvested before the seeds get large. They are often used in Asian cooking (stir-fries) or salads. Sugarsnap varieties are eaten whole -- both the pod and the peas are edible -- and they tend to be sweet.

Once you decide what type you want, you can get a wide range of varieties from Maine's seed companies: Johnny's Selected Seeds, FEDCO Seeds, and Pine Tree Garden Seeds. Pea seeds are also available at most garden centers.

Planting peas is easy. You simply make a shallow trench (about an inch deep and 3 inches wide) in your garden and scatter the seeds in the trench. An ounce of seed will plant about five feet of row. Cover the seeds firmly with soil and wait for the seeds to germinate. This usually takes about five to seven days. The peas don't need to be thinned, but you will want to keep the rows weeded.

When you plant your peas, the spacing between rows depends on the varieties that you are growing. Dwarf varieties don't need to be trellised, and the rows can be planted about 18 inches apart. Full size varieties need to be trellised, and they should be spaced about 4 feet apart. If the seed packet doesn't tell you that the peas are a dwarf variety, you should plan to erect a trellis.

A trellis can be as simple or fancy as you want to make it. The easiest version is to put two posts in the ground, about ten feet apart within the row, and fasten a net trellis to the posts. (Reusable trellises that last many years are available at most garden supply stores.) If you want a more traditional trellis, Maine gardeners for hundreds of years have grown their peas on birch brush-white birch branches stuck into the ground and woven together to form a row. If you decide to grow your peas on a brush trellis, you may want to allow a little more space between rows to make it easier to weed or harvest.

Because peas like cool soils, after the plants germinate you can keep the soil mulched with grass clippings or other materials to help keep weeds down.

Dwarf varieties are ready to eat in as little as seven weeks. Some of the taller varieties take up to ten weeks to reach maturity. Harvest shell peas just as the peas fill out the pods.

Enjoy early season in the garden -- plant your peas soon! In mid-April, peas sold in the Boston market are coming from Guatemala, Florida, and California. Wholesale prices range from $1.50 a pound for shell peas up to $6 a pound for organic snow peas. You can produce them right in your yard!

If you decide to trellis your peas on birch brush, MOFGA would welcome photographs -- we'll post some on our website this summer.

Northeast Livestock Expo

Windsor Fairgrounds

 www.maine.gov/agriculture/livestockexpo/

FARMLAND PROTECTION WORKSHOP

Join us for a day of education and inspiration for staff and board members of Land Trusts, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Conservation Commissions, municipal officials and others interested in protecting Maine’s working landscape.

Thursday, May 1, 2008 from 8:30 am – 3:30 pm

Workshop in Augusta (limited to 40 seats) will be broadcast to:

•           Presque Isle High School

•           Bangor Public Library

•           Bethel – Telstar High School

•           Berwick – Noble High School

Free registration! Please RSVP before April 22 by calling 287-3791 or emailing  Cheryl.maschino@maine.gov

Cheryl will email site directions to you.     Great handouts will be emailed too!

AGENDA

Second Annual

Statewide Farmland Protection Workshop - May 1, 2008

Augusta broadcast to Berwick, Bethel, Bangor and Presque Isle

8:30       Maine Status Update

                           Stephanie Gilbert, Farmland Protection Specialist

                           Maine Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources

Stephanie.gilbert@maine.gov    207-287-7520

8:50 Community Leadership for Farmland Protection in Massachusetts, New York & Connecticut

Cris Coffin, New England Director, American Farmland Trust

ccoffin@farmland.org 413-586-9330 x 29

9:40 Community Investments for Farmland Protection in Massachusetts

Good news about “Gaining Ground in Maine”

Ellie Kastanopolous, President, Equity Trust, Inc.

elliek@equitytrust.org 413-863-9038

10:20 Public & Private Financing Opportunities for Farmland Protection

John Piotti, Executive Director, Maine Farmland Trust

jpiotti@mainefarmlandtrust.org 207-338-6575

Daniel Patrick O'Connell, President, Evergreen Conservation Finance

pat@evergreencf.com 609-279-0068

12:00 Lunch break        Cross Café or nearby Japanese Restaurant

12:50 Additional questions from the morning session from each site

Berwick, Bethel, Bangor, Presque Isle

1:30 Links in Maine – Success stories & lessons learned

Esther LaCognata, Coordinator, Maine FarmLink

esther@mainefarmlink.org 207-338-6575

2:20 “What your board ought to discuss before it embarks on a farmland protection project or

other working landscape effort.”

     Jean Demetracopoulos, Farmland Protection Coordinator,

Great Works Regional Land Trust

foxhillf@aol.com 207-384-5030

3:30 Adjourn

YANKEE WOODLOT            University of Maine Cooperative Extension Bulletin ^#7116

Heating with Wood the "Lazy" Way:

  Plan Ahead!

Prepared by Jim Philip, Extension forestry specialist, wood technology

It’s almost May. Now that the weather has turned warmer and the black flies have become friendly again, I can forget about firewood until October, or maybe even November. When it turns colder, and my wife, Lou, begins threatening to turn on the electric heat, I’ll start thinking about firewood again. I’ve always been that way. When we don’t need the heat, I don’t worry about the firewood.

My traditional reaction to the electric heat threat was to go find the chain saw, get it back into operating condition, and cut some wood. Then split it and get it into the basement. In a week or 10 days, when we were down to a few sticks, I’d repeat the whole ghastly process.

We always had wet wood that was hard to light. It didn’t really produce much heat, so we had to use more of it. We had smoky fires that coated the inside of the chimney with creosote and dribbled black goo from the stovepipe onto the floor. We had one real dandy of a chimney fire that filled the house with smoke and drove us out. Fortunately, the chimney was new and well made, so it didn’t set fire to the house. In short, burning wood was a messy, inconvenient and even dangerous proposition.

Then, one winter, someone was moving, and I got a tremendous bargain on several cords of DRY hardwood. That winter, the things that I’d always known to be theoretically true were proved. The dry wood burned cleanly with little or no smoke. We didn’t get creosote in the chimney or gooey dribbles on the floor. The wood was easy to light and burned hotter: less wood made more heat. Life was good.

I’ve already admitted to being lazy, but I’m also a tightwad: Scottish by heritage and Yankee by inclination. If I can get a return of 18 percent (see Table 1) on my investment of time, labor and money by burning dry wood, that sounds like a good idea. So I’ve rearranged some of my priorities.

I’m still not going to worry about firewood until October or November. That’s because the wood for next winter was cut, split and piled in the woodshed a year ago, and I’ve just finished putting up wood for the winter after next. When we need it, all I’ll have to do is bring it in. It will be clean and dry and safe to burn. Maybe best of all, I won’t be out in the howling blizzard in the dead of night trying to get enough wood to stay warm for a few days. All of that's enough to make a lazy man smile.

If you would like to become a "lazy tightwad" about firewood, it’s not too late to start. If you put up your wood for next winter in April, it should dry to a moisture content of 25 to 30 percent by the time you need it. At this moisture level, it will burn pretty well, much better than green. Try to pile it off the ground (used pallets are free and work nicely) in the sun and cover the top . Don’t cover the sides of the pile. You want air to move through. If you can get two years ahead, you will have wood at about a 13 to 15 percent moisture content. Burning wood this dry is almost a luxury and is what prompted me to build my woodshed.

For Tables and more information, please see University of Maine Cooperative Extension Bulletin ^#7116

More Firewood Laziness

When I wrote the above article for Cooperative Extension's newsletter, Maine Farms and Forests, my neighbor hadn’t moved away yet. He’s the neighbor who owned the hydraulic wood-splitter. Since he was long on money to buy toys and short on mechanical aptitude, and I am the exact opposite, we had a wonderful relationship. I kept his machinery serviced and running in exchange for the privilege of using it.

Anyway, he moved away and took his splitter with him. So I found myself doing something that I haven’t done for years — splitting wood with a maul. Remember, I’m a tightwad and wouldn’t even consider hiring a splitter, let alone buying one! If you’re not with me on this, you might as well skip the rest of this fact sheet, since we’re not on the same wavelength.

First, I place a chunk of wood on the chopping block and deliver a mighty swing of the maul. One of two things happens: 1) the wood splits into two pieces, each of which fly in opposite directions, and I have to chase them for the next split or to throw them onto the pile, or 2)  it doesn’t split and promptly falls off the chopping block, so I have to pick it up and put it back before trying again. Either way, this represents too much wasted work for me!

Wood Splitting the Lazy Way

My attempts to ease my work load finally led to the following acceptable solution. I got a big, worn-out ATV tire about 14 inches wide and about two feet in diameter. It was free from a dealer who would have had to pay to get rid of it. I cut out most of both sidewalls with tin-snips and fastened it to the top of my chopping block with wood screws and big fender washers (see drawing above).

Now, when I get ready to split wood, I place it inside the tire, on top of the chopping block. This is very effective in keeping the chunk of wood on top of the chopping block, where it belongs. It also provides three additional benefits that I had not expected:

1. When the maul comes down, it is trapped inside the tire so there is no danger of chopping your foot.

2. The maul compresses the tire on the downswing, which in turn lifts the maul out of the split.

3. If you just drop the maul inside the tire while you are doing something else, it will stand up on its head, right where you can get it without bending over. 

4. Another thing (which I hate to admit) is that I purchased a pulpwood tong for picking up the wood and putting it onto the chopping block. This extends my reach and, thus, reduces bending. The tong "puts a handle" on the wood, which lets me pick it up with one hand. I also bought a belt holster for the thing so it’s always handy, and so I don’t have to bend over to get it. These are available from chainsaw dealers. They are well worth the investment, and that's the opinion of a tightwad!

Facts for People Who Heat with Wood

Fact 1:  Did you know that if you start with a cord of wood, cut it to shorter lengths, split it and then repile it, the original cord will shrink? The same amount of wood (less a little sawdust) will occupy less space. Table 3 shows how wood stacks up when cut and split.

Fact 2:  Different kinds of wood have different weights and fuel values. Table 2 shows some relative values.

Fact 3:  A "thrown" cord of 12- or 16-inch wood will occupy 52 more cubic feet of space than a stacked cord of wood.

Parents Are Teachers Too program
If you are expecting or recently had your first baby, call 1-800-287-1426 for more information or to enroll in the PATT program to help your child get the best possible start in life.

Eat Well program
Could you use help in stretching food stamps, cooking and shopping for one or two, providing snacks for children? Contact UMaine Cooperative Extension Eat Well Program for a nutrition aid to help you.

Newsletters available from UMaine Extension Waldo County

• 4-H on the Move – Monthly newsletter covering County, State & National 4-H activities, news, and resources

• Eat Well - Quarterly newsletter featuring food topics, nutrition, health, exercise & food safety, emphasizing our EatWell program

• Perspectives - Monthly newsletter with upcoming programming and events in Waldo County, and informative articles from various program areas

• Publications Catalog – Listing all UMaine Extension publications available

Staff

Extension Educators:

• Jane Haskell: Business, Youth & Community Development
• Rick Kersbergen: Agriculture & Natural Resources

EAT WELL NUTRITION STAFF:

• Sandy Dubay, Regional Nutrition Education Professional
• Beth Chamberlain, Pat Fraser: Eat Well Nutrition Associates

4-H PROGRAM AIDE:

• Joyce Weaver

PARENTS ARE TEACHERS, TOO STAFF:

• Pam LaHaye, Coordinator
• Martha Powers, Diane Russell, Ellie Weider

EXTENSION SUPPORT STAFF:

• Sónia Antunes

• Annette Hanser

Also:

• Liz Stanley, Horticultural Aide, Knox-Lincoln-Waldo county
• Caragh Fitzgerald, Ext. Educator, Kennebec & Waldo county

 
Waldo County Extension Association
PRESIDENT: Barbara Gould
SECRETARY: Lucia (Chia) Murdock
TREASURER:

Michelle Gharst
Jacqui Lee
Andrew Marshall
Robert Nelson
Anne Rothrock