Cold Times — How to Prepare for the Mini Ice Age

by Dr. Anita Bailey

  It is ready to harvest when the stalks are golden brown and the seed heads are beginning to droop. You can open a handful of kernels – they should be plump, and a little chewy to firm.

  Although growing wheat is easy, harvesting it is not. Lacking a wheat combine and tractor plus fuel and repair supplies, the tall grassy plants must be cut down with clippers or a scythe and stacked so that they can finish air drying. Clipping is tiring and must be done stooped over to cut at the bottom of the tall stems. Scything is a learned skill, and requires constant blade re-sharpening AND good mobility, strong back, and upper-body strength as well as a scythe, which should be purchased NOW if you plan to do this. Check Lehman’s online for old-time supplies.

  Stack the wheat stems, with seeds still in their pods, alternating armloads in layers so that the seed parts are toward the outside of the “stook”, or gather up several armloads and run a bit of twine around the area just below the seed heads – this will form a tipi- shaped bunch. Set it on end with the seeds at the top to dry.

  It can stand in the field for a few days to a week until the stems are crispy dry. Then, hope you don’t have a cold wet weather phase or your harvest will mold or mildew and become inedible. If that is coming, bring it under a shed or cover to protect it. Do not eat or feed to livestock any wheat or rye that has a black “smutty” mold on it – it might be a type that can cause hallucinations and death.

  Next, the wheat kernels must be “threshed” or separated from the stems and husks. For a backyard operation, the dried stems and seed heads can be laid on a tarp and beaten with plastic baseball bats – the modern equivalent of a “wheat flail” – to loosen and separate the seeds.

  After several hours of flailing, the stems can be hand-separated, and the seeds and smaller plant material poured from the tarp into buckets.

  Now, the seeds are “winnowed,” that is, separated from the “chaff” (the plant stems and other debris) -- by pouring from one bucket into another during a windy day. The heavier seeds will fall into the lower bucket, while the lighter chaff is carried away on the breeze.

  If you have flailed and winnowed the wheat well, you’ll have nice clean grain ready to dry a bit, grind, and make into bread. If your effort was lackluster, you’ll have hulls and stemmy material in your grain. You can grind and eat that with the kernels, but the high fiber ratio will give you poor, tough bread.

  Scything, threshing and winnowing is a LOT of work, for a small amount of food. Growing and processing wheat into flour is, ideally, the work of an extended family or community. More hands make the tedious effort into lighter work.

  Eating Wheat

  You can eat wheat sprouted, whole, or ground. Sprouted wheat produces a green shoot, “wheat grass,” and is eaten when it is about 2” tall. Grow just like any sprouted seed with daily water washing and good sunlight. Whole kernels can be treated like rice, boiled until soft and chewy, and then herbed like rice or sweetened, buttered, mixed into milk or cream, with nuts or dried fruit added like oatmeal and enjoyed.

  Grinding wheat is easiest with a good-quality hand grinder. The Corona Mill, a cheap cast metal product (about $70), will grind your wheat – but you’ll have to pass it through several times to get flour fine enough for bread. By far the best I have used is the Country Living Grain Mill (around $400), which takes only one or two passes to get good flour and can be set up to use a treadle or bicycle-powered pulley with some creativity. Today, with the grid humming smoothly, I use a Braun coffee grinder to finely grind one cup of wheat berries at a time. Four cups or so makes a loaf of whole wheat bread.

  Home ground whole wheat produces a sturdy loaf of bread. You just plain won’t get the puffy stuff that the supermarket provides. You will need to store yeast, as well, or keep a “starter” going to raise your bread. See the Recipes section for one way to make bread.

  More About Corn

  Corn is familiar, easy to grow, easy to harvest, and easy to store. It lends itself to fresh eating, drying, livestock feeding, quick breads and muffins, breading on other foods, and breakfast grits….not to mention backyard brewing. Prior to mechanization of farming, a typical small holding could grow 20 bushels per acre – a bushel of corn is about 50 pounds, so that’s about a half-ton of corn. Given modern high production methods, tractors and harvesters, chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, and extensive genetic modification, a 150 bushel per acre crop is not uncommon. Plan on the smaller production, or less, with the arrival of Cold Times. Because corn is sensitive to cold, you may not get a crop at all.

  The best thing about corn, though, is that you can plant and harvest an acre by yourself without anything other than a pair of hands. Leather gloves and a “corn hook”, a flat metal hook worn in the palm of the hand to help when “shucking” [removing] the husks, will make it easier, though.

  Varieties

  All varieties of corn can be eaten as baby cobs at 1-2” long, before the seeds form; “green” like a sweet corn right off the cob; roasted in the husks; and dried and ground or parched. Popcorn is in there, too, but has the advantage of being fairly consistent when oil-popped. All corns can be fed to livestock, on the cob or shelled off, including popcorn. So, even though there are remarkable differences between corn varieties, they’re all food.

  There are three broad basic types, with lots of overlap: “sweet”, “field”, and “pop”. Sweet corn is generally viewed as the familiar type eaten fresh off the cob. Today, we have varieties specifically bred for that table use. Field corns are consumed dried and used as animal feeds. Two types of field corn, “flint” and “dent” can be separated by how the kernel dries. Dent corn has a dent in the top of each kernel, but flint does not. Popcorn dries rounded, so when popping it expands more uniformly than other types.

  What we know as "sweet" corn is merely a lengthened stage in the development of the kernel. All corn types, including flour or field corn, goes through a sweet stage on the way to the full maturity of the kernel.

  Corn that has reached "milk" stage is sweet, tasty and table ready. Most commercial varieties reach that at 60-90 days of growth. Corn that has passed milk stage is invariably starchy and chewy -- doesn't matter whether it is sold as a "sweet" corn or a "field" corn.

  Modern table sweet corn varieties have been commercially developed to remain in the milk stage for LONG periods of time. That allows harvest to proceed to storage to shipping to placement in the supermarket, then to be brought home, set in the refrigerator until whatever meal, and then cooked and served. So the milk stage can last for weeks to even a month or more, if refrigerated.

  That is a genetic aberration, the product of hybridization and mutations (really)! “Super” sweet hybrid varieties actually have genetic mutations that were the result of atomic tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Yes, atomic radiation created the mutants we find in the supermarkets. Historical article links are in the information resources section.

  Open pollinated heirloom corn, like Stowell's Evergreen and Wade's Giant, have a short milk stage, sometimes as short as 3 days. Each ear ripens on its own schedule, so it doesn't all reach milk stage at the same time, either. You can pick an ear off of side-by-side stalks, and one is perfect, the other starchy.

  Traditionally, the best table corn was picked at milk stage, shucked and raced into the kitchen, so that there was three minutes or less between field and boiling water. The boiling water "set" the sweetness, and voila! Perfect sweet corn on the table, and perfect field corn still growing outside.

  You can determine milk stage, by carefully opening an ear on the stalk in the field. Press a few kernels with your thumbnail until they break. If the fluid coming from the kernel looks milky, you're there! If it is thin, it's not ready; if thick and pasty, it’s past it.

  Stowell's Evergreen was an unusual variety in that it would store in the milk stage a bit longer than other types. Typically, you'd pull the entire plant when the kernels were in milk, and hang it upside down until you wanted corn. When it
went past milk stage, you could still use it on the table, but the kernels were stripped from the cobs and cooked with milk and sugar to produce something like what we know today as "creamed corn".

  Corn can be eaten in any stage, from the tiniest unpollinated cobs as you'll find in Chinese cooking, to the fully mature hard dried kernels which can be ground into cornmeal for bread and feed.

  It's helpful to keep in mind that the *stuff* they sell in the supermarket is a far cry from the real food people ate a few generations ago. It's more like "sugar on the cob" from the atomic mutations, than "protein on the cob", which is what heirloom corns actually are.

  Variety Selection

  Selecting corns to grow should be based on your end need and your growing conditions. Since it has such broad uses, my preference is for a variety that will feed us and our livestock, plus grow quickly in what might be extreme circumstances – weather abnormalities, poor soil, high winds, sudden cold, or lack of regular rain. In a severe situation, I’ll have enough to do without having to baby any tenderfoot crops.

  Also, because I plan to save seeds, it will have to be open-pollinated, not a hybrid. I want corn that has a lot of genetic variability, too, so that after a few generations it isn’t so inbred that “genetic depression,” a loss of vigor happens…I may not be able to buy replacements.

  To keep a corn strain pure, growers must separate them by a half mile, or by growing varieties so they pollinate at different times – and I don’t have that much land, and maybe won’t have enough time in one season for two plantings. My early thoughts were to have five or six unrelated varieties together in the field, and let them cross freely. Then select the hardiest from that and keep it going. Fortunately, someone else had the same idea a while ago and did the work for us.

  Dave Christiansen wanted to grow corn in the harsh, short Montana summers, so he began looking for old types of original native corns that did well in that area. After decades, he had bred together dozens of lines of some of the last surviving examples of ancient hardy corn and developed what he called Painted Mountain. This is a multicolored corn that produces well in cold, dry conditions and short but hot Montana summers. It’s also fairly high protein, around 13%, and at least one grower (Rocky Mountain Corn, see references) guarantees it to be free of GMO contamination.

  Painted Mountain Alpine can be planted in chilly soil, much earlier than most other varieties. Sprouts can tolerate light frost. It’s pretty wind-tolerant, and can be planted just 8 inches apart. Plants grow only 3 to 4 feet tall, and produce one or two ears per stalk, usually down low on the plant. “Table” corn is ready in about 50 days, when the kernels are filled out and before they begin to develop color. The taste is crunchy, sweet and corny. Dry corn is done in about 90 days or less, although I’ve had it finish in 62 days.

  Cornbread made from PM is only mildly corn flavored; it would be a great corn for corn-pasta. Each ear is colorful and different, from 4 to 8 inches long. They resist corn earworm, although a few ears can get invaded. The stalks make good livestock feed after the corn has been picked, too.

  Painted Mountain’s big drawback in my area is that it doesn’t do well in hot high moisture environments – it gets moldy. In humid, wet, warm environments, new growers could look to sources such as Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (link in references). Their ancient variety, Gourdseed Corn, is adapted to the southern US sultry environment.

  Growing

  Corn is a “heavy feeder”, which means it needs the kind of nitrogen that manure produces. The ancient Indian method of placing a fish in each mound when planting corn, helped with that nitrogen requirement, and so will planting beans around the plants. Another option is to make a “manure tea”, soaking livestock manure in water for several days and pouring the odorous results around each plant. If manure is in short supply, this is one way to stretch it. Don’t get it directly on the plant itself, because it can burn the leaves. Aged compost is also an excellent source.

  Corn can be planted in rows, putting one seed about 3” inches deep, 12 inches from the next plant, and then separating the rows by 18” or a bit more. Indians planted in small hills, about 10-15 seeds per hill, thinned down to the 5-7 healthiest plants. In the same hill, they planted a few pole bean and winter squash seeds. The traditional combination of “three sisters” helped the corn get nitrogen from the beans, and the squash kept the roots sheltered from summer drying – plus, the harvest would include beans and squash! In high wind areas, planting in hills helps the clumped bush-like corn stabilize individual plants, plus virtually assures pollination, which can otherwise be problematic if high winds carry the pollen away from the plot.

  Weeding corn is pretty important for the best growth. Once the corn sprouts are up, weeding can be done every two weeks or so until the corn is too dense to weed through. Keeping the weeds down makes sure there is plenty of air movement in the lower parts of the plants, and helps reduce hiding places for the wild critters who also enjoy corn.

  Corn is wind-pollinated, even though bees will sometimes hang around the plants when the top tassels develop. A sprig of “silks” will grow from the end of each corn cob, with each silk thread leading down to a single kernel. If you get a grasshopper invasion when the corn is in silk, you may lose the crop. Grasshoppers eat the silks, so the kernels don’t get pollinated and don’t develop. After the silks have turned brown, an eyedropper full of cooking or mineral oil, placed into the cob at the silk end, will discourage corn ear worms. Keep in mind that some varieties of corn have tighter husks that keep ear worms out.

  Harvest and Storage

  Corn can be harvested when it is dry in the field, or after it has fully matured and the husks are beginning to dry. Pull each cob off the plant and shuck it right there. If there are earworms, they won’t be able to damage the corn while in storage if the critters are left in the field. The kernels should be quite dry, but still firmly attached to the cob. Put cobs into baskets or airy lattice-type bags, or store in a corncrib. A corncrib is a small roofed shed-type structure with slight gaps in the sideboards to allow air flow and drying. After the corn has dried enough that the kernels are “wiggling-loose”, you can rub the kernels off and use or store them. If you have an antique corn-sheller, start turning and put ears through one by one for fast shelling. A small ear of dried corn will give you about ½ - ¾ cup of kernels.

  Store shelled or dried cob corn in a dry location that is moderately cool. Mice and bugs will get it if they have access, so screens and buckets with screen lids can make a difference. Save seed from at least 500 different plants for genetic diversity, if you can, and keep enough that you can plant at least two years from that (5 years’ worth would be better), just in case one crop gets wiped out.

  Corn Supper

  This is such a versatile crop, it’s no wonder that corn was the primary grain in the Americas since people were here. Aside from fresh eating, the kernels can be ground using a hand-powered mill (Corona Mill is the bottom of the line, Country Living Mill near the top), or in the blender. At this time, I use an electric Braun coffee grinder and grind about a cup at a time.

  Ground coarsely, it makes wonderful grits when boiled for a half hour or more. Ground medium and spiced with Lawry’s Season Salt or any other combination of herbs and spices, it’s a nice breading for poultry, fish, and “chicken-fried” anything, as well as homemade polenta. More finely ground corn is wonderful for corn breads. Super-fine ground corn is ideal for corn-based pastas. Finely ground corn can be used to thicken soups and stews, also. Remember, popcorn can be ground, too, with all those same potential uses.

  Painted Mountain Alpine and other colored corns produce breads that are NOT yellow – the PM-A corn and Wade’s Giant, give a lovely brown corn bread with almost no obvious corny flavor. I have used this corn as a base for muffins with a quarter cup of wheat flour (home ground, naturally) and all kinds of yummy extras – bananas, walnuts, cranberries, even pineapple. Most people can’t tell that it is primaril
y corn-based.

  Keep one thought in the back of your mind: pellagra. In the olden days during the First Great Depression, many cases of B-vitamin deficiency were found among poor people. The worst effects included extreme fatigue, muscle wasting, mental issues including retardation, fluid retention, and other symptoms.

  The reason pellagra flourished was because poor people were limited in diet to virtually only corn and corn products – which is notoriously low in B-vitamins. Even if you have a LOT of corn, make sure you get plenty of meat proteins, eggs, especially liver which is a super-high source of B-vitamins, green vegetables, and even home brewed beer made from other grains and hops….and daily multivitamin supplements help, too. Obviously, a widely varied diet will get you what you need. Cornbread with beans and ham, with salad on the side, is a perfect vitamin and mineral-rich meal!