Loved the Gardening History Article

To the Editor:

I was so excited to read Lillie Mae Brighttwell’s recent article, “Corn and Survival.” In our home garden in Plum, we grow a variety of heirloom fruits and vegetables all year long that make up a significant portion of our diet. We also have eggs and meat from deer and chickens that we butcher.

In an effort to be even more food independent, we wanted to produce our own grain this year. We dedicated a portion of the garden to the Three Sisters – corn, squash, and beans, which my children and I have learned about in our homeschooling when we studied Native Americans and the Pilgrims. We chose a Native American corn variety called Painted Mountain corn, pumpkins and green beans for our Three Sisters. Everything has done wonderfully, and we’ve already enjoyed our first pumpkin pie.

We harvested several ears of corn when they were in their “milk” stage and boiled them as you would sweet corn. Not only was this corn beautiful – ranging in colors from deep red to yellow, orange, pink, blue, purple and striped, but they were delicious. After leaving the rest on the stalks to plump up, we finally harvested them yesterday. I shared Ms. Brightwell’s article with my six children as we sat around pulling back husks, each person anxious to show off the colors they discovered on their ear of corn.

Now I’ve been searching the internet to learn how to dry it and nixtamalize it. I was eagerly looking forward to Part 2 of Ms. Brightwell’s article which appeared in Tuesday’s Record, and I would love any input from those wise farmers around here about the process of keeping and storing corn for flour. I believe these skills that our predecessors utilized are invaluable to learn and pass along, especially to our children.

Brianne Bernsen

Plum