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Fatty Acids

By Jean English Fatty acids are straight chains of carbon (C) atoms that have hydrogen (H) atoms attched. The beginning of the fatty acid is a methyl (CH3) group, and the end is a carboxyl (COOH) group. The carbon atoms are numbered from 1, at the beginning, to n, at the end. Omega-3 fatty acids

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Whodunits

By Eric Sideman, Ph.D. The causes of some garden tragedies are obvious, while other causes are mysterious. When Colorado potato beetles eat every leaf and your potatoes never get larger than golf balls, there really is no puzzle to solve. But sometimes gardeners don’t know what went wrong, and they chalk some problems up to

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Tips Fall 2003

Organic for Kids – Seven Tips for Buying Organic Foods 1. When starting out, focus on organic alternatives to the foods your family eats most. 2. Try to add one new organic item to your cart each week. 3. Learn to read the USDA organic labels: 100% organic – may carry the USDA Organic seal

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Sunflowers Fuel a Maine Dairy Farm

Sunflower seed is planted in rows 30″ apart using a tractor-mounted corn planter and cultivated several times with mid-mounted sweeps. These plants were growing at UMaine’s Rogers Farm. Rick Kersbergen photo. by Polly Shyka If the pinecone is Maine’s state flower, then the sunflower, a native, useful, generous and beautiful plant, should be the national

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Terra Madre

Maine is Part of the Scene by Jo Anne Bander Artisan cheeses, jarred artichokes, colored salts, smoked meats, chocolates: Artful displays of such foods at 600 stalls in the Turin, Italy, Lingotto Fiere exhibition center for the seventh Slow Food Salone del Gusto could have been viewed and tasted at any Italian-flavored food show that

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Forest Management

by Mitch Lansky A thousand-year forest management plan. Am I joking? After all, the United States is only a little over two centuries old. We live in a world of rapidly changing technologies where, in just a decade or so, people have started using personal computers and cell phones on a wide scale. It is

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Rice

by Linda and Takeshi Akaogi In the Sept. 2008 issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, Cheryl Bruce reported on efforts by Linda and Takeshi Akaogi to grow rice on their small farm in Putney, Vermont. In March 2008, the couple received a SARE Farmer Grant to evaluate the viability of rice production in

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Kiwis

Fruit of mixed cultivars of kiwis at the Teltane Farm booth at the Common Ground Country Fair. Hardy kiwis are not difficult to grow and can be very productive. English photo. by Tom Vigue If you think kiwis are all brown, fuzzy and can be grown only in New Zealand or California, think again. Although

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Healthy Soil

Cornell Soil Test Report. Bianca Moebius-Clune, a graduate student at Cornell University, introduced the Cornell Soil Health Test (CSHT) at the 2008 Farmer-to-Farmer Conference, and Dennis King of King Hill Farm in Penobscot, Maine, told how he evaluates soil health on the diversified farm that he and Jo Barrett own and run. The CSHT, the

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On-Farm Seed Production

Greensprouting potatoes at Wood Prairie Farm. Photo courtesy of Wood Prairie Farm. Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, Maine, and Andrea Berry of Hope Seeds in Glassville, New Brunswick, talked about seed and potato seed tuber production at the 2008 Farmer-to-Farmer Conference in Bar Harbor. Gerritsen and his family sell potatoes, other crops,

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