Blood Brothers Corn (from seed to cornbread in six months)

Okay, so it's been awhile since I've done anything with this blog......But, I have been BUSY.  Life is what happens when you're not sitting in front of a laptop.  I digress though, and what I want to post here today is my adventure with growing an heirloom corn, grinding flour and ultimately making my own cornbread (with cracklin's).
In the past, corn has not really been my favorite crop.  It can be a fussy germinator.  It needs lots of space, water and further fussing.  However, ever since reading Michael Pollan's "Omnivores dilemma" I have been intrigued by the fact that it is a "human-made" and also very much human reliant plant.  Contemporary, GMO corn is also very much a manmade thing, but my interest here is with heirloom varieties that have come into being, not in a laboratory, but from millions of years of human meddling.  It really is an interesting and beautiful plant.

I selected a red flour corn for this years crop.  "Blood Brothers", is the result of crossing Aztec Black and I think Mandan Bride.  I wouldn't really call it red, but rather red/purple, especially when dried, as pictured above.

I planted seed back in late April in roughly a 12' x 12' block.  Instead of rows I staggered the seed hills so that they were about 18" apart in all directions.  Three-four seeds per hill, later to be thinned to the one strongest per hill.  Despite the cold Spring this year (again), they all did pretty well germinating.

One month old plants--or therabouts.

Blood brothers is a rather short corn.  It only grew about 5-6 feet high.  It produces well though.  I harvested it in September and hung it to dry on the cob for about a month or so before twisting it off the cobs and further drying the seed in the dehydrator so that it was totally dry for grinding.

It took about 3-4 passes with the hand grinder to get a medium textured cornmeal.  If I do this again, I think I may invest in an electric grain mill--though it is good exercise for ones arms!

Once ground, I decided to search the web for a good Cracklin Cornbread recipe and since I still have a large quantity of nice organic, pastured pork fat in the freezer, I made my own cracklin's.

here is the cubed up fat, before rendering......

and after.....

The end result.  Yummy little cracklins and rendered lard.

On to the cornbread making.  Followed the recipe for the most part, except I didn't have any buttermilk so I added some vinegar to a cup of milk as a substitute.  I was also able to use the lard that was rendered from the cracklin's instead of bacon fat.

The batter goes into a hot skillet with melted lard in it.  Then into the oven.

The end result.

This ain't your momma's cornbread!

The actual color was difficult to capture, but it was very close to blue tortilla corn chips.

The outside edges were browned and very crisp and tasted a bit like corn dog batter.

The inside, moist and crumbly.

Overall, it had a really good flavor, perhaps a bit stronger and "cornier" that your average cornbread.

So,  there it is.....

I plan on using the cornmeal for polenta as well. 

I saved some seed for next year but have already found some new varieties that look interesting as well.  Floriani Red Flint, and Oxacan Green Dent are amongst a a few that I may end up trying.

Solanaceae, the heat lovers

Finally time to break out the heat pads and start tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos.  

I use just regular old heat pads (the kind used for human injuries) instead of seed starting mats.  As long as it isn't a sunny day (in which case, I usually don't need the heat pads), the medium setting generates a toasty 80-95 degree temp range that will germinate the tomatoes and tomatillos usually within 3-4 days time.  Peppers take about a week.

I make a sort of "mini greenhouse" out of used, plastic, salad green bins with lids.  Lids are off or ajar during the day (again, depends on how sunny or cloudy it is under the skylight) and back on again at night to keep heat in as temps drop into the low 60's in our house.

This year, in anticipation of providing for 4 families, I've started 24 tomatoes, about 15 peppers and 8 tomatillos to be planted out, weather permitting (and fingers crossed) mid-late May.

Most of the above method is fairly old hat for me.  However, the new twist is that instead of using coco grow pellets, I've made mini "cow pots" (see February post) out of paper towels.  These will be up-potted into the larger "cow pots" as soon as they get a set of their true leaves.

Here's to making tomato sauce, using hopefully our own tomatoes, green peppers, garlic and onions, come September......

180 onions

Okay, so these images are underwhelming for sure....but just wanted to blog the onion starts that Amy, Chelsea and I planted out on March 5th.  We planted about 60 each of Cippolini, Red Torpedo and Copra.

Also planted that day (which BTW, was lovely and mostly sunny), arugula and spinach.

And then there was one.....

I really don't like this part of starting seeds.  "Culling" is what I think of it.

 I always overcompensate on germanation rates and plant at least three seeds per starter.  Most of the time, unless the seed is a few years old, they all come up.  I only need one per pod.  I just can never bring myself to plant just one seed.  

So "snip"goes the small, the misshapen, the late and the "leggy".  Sometimes, if all three are of equal vigor, it's just the luck of the draw......

They do not perish in vain.  They make right tasty little broccoli flavored sprouts.....

 And the lucky ones grow on.....

Homemade Cowpots

So, I was to buy some of these so-called "Cowpots" because I thought that having a plantable pot with built in fertilizer made from a renewable resource (that being cow poo) is a great idea.  However, with over 50 brassica starts, and at a whopping $.50  per pot,  I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Instead I 

made my own.  

After gathering the "raw material", courtesy my mom's cattle in Kelso, I started experimenting with breaking up and adding water to the manure, which, BTW, was not smelly at all having been deposited last Fall. 

As I started to experiment, I quickly found out,  that not having the benefit of a powerful mechanical press, the poo was not going to hold up on it's own.  It needed some kind of structure to hold it together and what ever it was also needed to be just strong enough to hold up without impeding root growth.  I settled on using sinamay mesh (a coarse woven, natural fiber mesh) which I picked up at Howell's Craftland.  People usually use this stuff for hats, or as ribbon.  I bet I'm the only person who's ever bought this stuff with the objective of covering it with shit (a fact I did not share with the shop owner).  

My first attempt at trying to cover preformed sinamay frames failed, as I couldn't get the poo to adhere sucessfully.  I quickly realized that a layer of moistened manure needed to be pounded into a flat piece of the mesh on both sides.  It worked great, kind of reminding me of wattle and dob construction on a tiny scale (the Masai, of Tanzania actually do build their houses of wattle and dob with cow dung).  I then made cylinders and then pushed a small piece of mesh through one end to form the bottom and then spackled that with more manure.  Wallah!  

After resting on cloth to collect excess moisture, they went into a low (200) oven until dry.

Yes, that's right.  I put them in OUR OVEN.  I have a very tolerant household.  But actually, while "baking" they kind of smelled like cooked spinach!

I up-potted 20-some brassica starts to these poo pots the other day.  Hopefully they will perform well, allowing the roots to penetrate the sides.  They will then be planted, pot and all about mid March.

This red cabbage seems happy so far......

We Got Sprout!

drum roll........and the winner is, "Apollo Broccoli".

Within 34 hours, (a record I think) the brassica seeds started sprouting.  Apollo broccoli was the first one, followed by all the rest save for the Tyfon, which I think the seed may be too old.

Today, after visiting "Roots Garden Supply" on N. Interstate, to pick up some new coco grow pellets, I started several more seeds.  You may note the soil temperature thermometer in the pic.  I think that things sprouted quickly this year because I was able to hold them between 65-80 degrees.  

In other news, things are awakening around the garden.  First with the violets, which are actually very few in my yard but there is a whole drift of them in the backyard of the hipster flop house next door.  Why, you may wonder, would sweet little flowers do so well when no one does anything but occasionally trounce on them while going out to smoke and drink their PBR?  Well, the funny thing is that violets LOVE neglect and dislike being fussed with by having weeds pulled around them or their soil otherwise disturbed.  Therefore, they do not do well in my yard....

How I love them though.....

What I do have, that would not do well without my care are crocus and my very early blooming pink rhododendron, whose name I've forgotten.  It starts blooming in late december.

"Failing to make a complete stop",

So I begin this blog on the day that I receive my first traffic ticket in twenty years .....and the irony is, that while I didn't make a complete stop at the corner of Willis and Woolsey, this incident pretty much brought "a complete stop" to most of my plans for the day, and that is why I sit here, nursing the teething baby Lola for the umpteenth time today, while the kitchen is still a mess from both dinner and my unfinished first seed starts of broccoli, cabbage and kale.  My day was further muddled by the fact that I misplaced my iphone, only to find it after several hours tearing the house apart, between the cookie jar and the compost bin.  I had hid it there from my four-year-old, Bea.  The ringer was turned off.....But I digress already, and I am eager to at least save the day by getting my brassica starts going which will include "Apollo" and "Purple Peacock" broccoli, "Beira Tronchuda" cabbage (loose-leaf, Portuguese cabbage) "Red Acre" cabbage and several varieties of kale.  Most all of these will eventually be planted out on Sauvie Island, where I will be sharing for the third year in a row, a garden co-op with friends.