Hello, and welcome to my page!
As my regular readers know, I grow hard corn in my garden instead of sweet corn. Hard corn has several uses, from flour or grits to making hominy. For the past 2 years, I've grown a corn variety called Painted Mountain. This corn variety is a hybrid that was created in Montana by cross pollinating many different types of Native American corn. The result is a short season multicolor variety that will grow at higher altitudes, up to 6000 feet, and has a higher nutritional value than any of the commercially grown modern types of corn. This variety is one of the best flour corn varieties that you can grow on your homestead or garden. It can be ground very fine, unlike some of the commercial varieties of corn.
I picked the corn off the stalks at the end of September. This was just the first part of the harvest.
Once the corn was picked, I had to shuck it to allow it to dry further. There's still a fair amount of moisture in the corn when you pick it.
Since I didn't want to stack the corn while it was drying, I had to hang some of it from the rafters in the greenhouse for drying. This picture is from mid October.
The corn cobs have been sitting, or hanging, in the greenhouse until now. There's no reason to worry too much about getting the corn off the cob in the fall, as long as it stays dry. Now that it's cold outside, I've been thinking about starting the process of getting the corn off the cobs. At some point, it's likely that rodents will discover the corn and start stripping the cobs. I had that happen last year. Mice are actually pretty good at pulling kernels off the cob and carrying them off to some hiding place.
I had previously picked up all the cobs off the drying screen and put them in a tote during my fall greenhouse cleanup efforts.
This afternoon, I made a fire in the greenhouse wood stove to warm it up a bit so it was more comfortable to do stuff in the greenhouse. Then I started removing the corn kernels from the cobs. I had several of them done when I took this picture. As I was processing the corn, I was putting the empty cobs in the wood stove. That seemed like the easiest way to get rid of them. The weird looking tool is used to help with the process of removing the kernels from the corn.
To use the tool, you take the cob and turn it against the teeth on the tool as you push it through the hole on the tool. There are 2 different size holes on the tool for different sized cobs.
Since this is a tedious job, I tend to get bored with it after a while. When I decided to quit for the day, I had a decent amount of corn ready for storage.
There's still a lot of corn left to do, it's something to do when you don't have much else to do. I'll eventually get it all off the cobs and into storage containers. Since dry corn stores well, I can keep it in sealed containers until I'm ready to use it.
That's all I have for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!
Lovely colors. Is this the same as flint corn? I've only grown sweet corn.
When it gets to be winter, and some homesteaders live too far away from the store, or can't through the snow, this seems like a good type of crop to have grown so there is always something available to cook up in the pantry.
I'm not sure if this is considered a flint corn or not. I know it's not a dent corn because the kernels don't get the little dent in them as they dry.
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Mighty handy tool it looks like... I've always love Painted Mountain, so pretty, but have never grown it as corn takes so much garden space.
I agree, it does take up a lot of space. So does potatoes, if you want a big harvest. That's why I was growing them at the community garden, extra growing space. :-)
What are your tips for cooking with dried corn?
I don't think that I have ever made any.
I don't cook it whole, although you can do that by boiling it until it gets soft.
I grind the corn and use it for flour and grits. You can make a lot of different things with corn flour.
Awesome.
I use a lot of corn flower in the spring/summer. We love having cast iron corn bread with bbq ribs and brisket.
I'm looking forward to following your account.
Cheers,
NL
Thank you! :-)