The Pantheon of the Native Gods of the Americas Is As Longer Or Longer As That of Greeks

Growing Corn

The pantheon of the native gods of the Americas is as longer or longer as that of Greeks, but most of the Native American traditions relate that the gods brought four gifts to man -

1. Fire
2. Water
3. Earth
4. Corn

Among many of the native traditions, corn holds prominence and I feel that it is first and foremost what we must most concern ourselves with for recovery after The Great Catastrophe. Corn is the largest crop planted in the US, soy and wheat being second and third.

On average Americans consume over 40 bushels of corn a year, although not directly. Much of it is converted to sugar/fructose, corn oil, ethanol fuel, animal feed (and then we eat the milk, eggs, cows, chickens, pork), and it also appears in hundreds of other products from cloth to paint and plastics.

Initially we are only concerned about corn for food and perhaps after initial survival it will be used for oil, sweetener, alcohol and internal engine combustible fuel. Here we are going to focus on food.

There are four major categories of corn

1. Dent
2. Flint
3. Sweet corn
4. Flour corn
5. Popcorn

While any kind of corn can be popped or used for any of the other purposes each category has varieties that are particularly suited to the purposes of that category. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of varieties of corn.

Today most planted corn is hybrid, which means that its seed is obtained from two or more varieties of other corn. For survival purposes one does not want to use hybrid corn because it will not provide pure seed for a second generation but will rather degenerate into its genetic components.

Hybrid seed will give standard dependable results and has been bred for particular qualities depending upon the variety. Large ears, resistance to diseases and insects, early or late planting, faster maturity, sweetness and sugar content, large popping kernels, and any one or several of dozens of other qualities. Hybrid greatly improves the farmer's profitability.

However, the corn seed that we use needs to be OPEN POLLINATED, which means that it can reproduce directly. While it will not have many of the exceptional qualities of different varieties of hybrid and will not provide near the yield per acre it is essential to our purpose.

Modern farming often achieves 140, 150, or more, bushels per acre. This is achieved by using herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, and petroleum based mechanized farming. The original native farmers were fortunate to get 30 bushels per acre and let our goal be to get 20.

Native peoples generally survived by one of two methods, either the hunt, or growing corn, or some combination of both. Those who only hunted still greatly desired corn and considered it a luxury when they could trade for it, or steal it.

Among OPEN POLLINATED corn there are still many thousands of varieties from which we may choose. Ideally one will choose one suited to their climate and soil and that is resistant to the pests/diseases in their area. They need also choose a variety suited to their purpose and to that end we need to once again examine the categories which we shall now do in the reverse order of the priorities listed above.

Popcorn

While most everyone enjoys popcorn, and while I have grown popcorn with some success, that would hardly be practical for the survival of many.

Flour corn

Because of its soft, starchy, yellow kernels it is one of the only corns that can be ground into a fine flour. The rest make a coarse sort of cornmeal. In the US it is usually called corn starch. Good stuff, but not our goal.

Sweet corn

What most people think of today, when they just think of corn. Corn in the can. Corn on the cob. Fun, good, but we are looking for something more substantial.

Flint corn

Now we are getting somewhere. It is a hard kernel, often called Indian corn, but still not quite what we want.

Dent corn

This is the corn that we need. Ninety percent of the acreage planted in corn is planted in Dent corn, although most of the dent corn is not used for direct human consumption just as corn, the reason being that the mature corn is hard for people to digest. It is hard for animals to digest also but the farmers overcome that by pumping them full of antibiotics.

There is a way to prepare dent corn that greatly increases its nutrition and makes it easily digestible by people, but the Conquistadors who learned of corn from the natives in America and took it Spain and Europe did not learn the technology for preparing it, so many people in Europe decided it was for cattle feed only. In a previous article I described how the corn has to be prepared, and how in that way it came to be a major staple for the Indians, Mexicans and in many places in South America.

I won't again go into the preparation of the corn for eating. In this article I am going to focus on growing the corn because unless people quickly learn to do that after The Great Catastrophe they are going to starve once the current stocks of food are exhausted.

Growing Dent Corn

I have spent many days studying out what I am writing about here and I can tell you it will be a miracle if you can grow corn following my directions. However, if you succeed with a first year's crop you are quite likely to be much more successful in subsequent years. The best teacher is experience and the best aid is to find an agronomist of some level to assist you.

Selecting the Seed

This is VERY important. There are thousands of varieties. In my search I contacted numerous suppliers. Many were easy to eliminate because they provided only hybrid seed. Some were very helpful, nevertheless, in pointing me to other sources. My search finally led me towards a particular individual, mentioned in numerous farm magazine articles, who was highly praised and commented about for the varieties of OPEN Pollinated that he has maintained and developed over several decades. It took me two hours of searching just to find his phone number, but I eventually did, although I have never spoken with him.

I have spoken lengthily with his wife, and hope to continue to do so. She is also very knowledgeable and has pointed me on to other sources that were very beneficial. One of the sources is Corn Among the Indians (The pdf download didn’t work for me - but the Kindle version, except for the cover and pictures, looks great.) I don't actually recommend this book for anyone unless they are doing the in-depth type of research that I am.

There is much that we can learn from the ancient Indians. Their style and circumstances of life were much closer to what we shall have to do and much of what they knew has been forgotten, (actually never learned) by the present generation of farmers. On the other hand there are things that we now know, that they didn't. For example - in genetic selection it is best that in addition to selecting the best ears that one also take some of the other in order to preserve some genes that are recessive for unforeseen circumstances such as resistance to presently unknown diseases and plagues.

I have not yet selected, or even know the options available, as to the varieties that I might recommend, but as I continue to study this, I plan to share that information with you.

Native Planting

The native planting methods were much different from modern planting methods and we shall have to do is much the same as they did. They did not horses or oxen and they most certainly did not have petroleum fueled tractors and farm equipment. Horses were unknown to the early American Indians and were brought to America by the Spanish Conquistadors. Even once they acquired horses it was for the hunt and battle. Indian ponies were really not suited to agriculture.

Our situation will be much the same today. Most horses about are the wrong breed and have not been trained to the hardwork of the plow. They are riding and racing horses with skinny legs and hooves built for bursts of speed and little endurance on rough land. The natives had to form hand tools out of wood and bone. We do have an advantage in that there will undoubtedly be much scrap metal left around that we may be able to fashion into some sort of implement. Shovels, hoes, axes, and rakes are of the first order of magnitude, but it may also be possible to create some types of plows, harrows and cultivators.

Even without horses, the latter types of implements may be the best bet. My reasoning for this is that much of the field labor force will, just like the horses, be unbred and untrained to the endurance required. It will be easier to get more work out of a work gang pulling a single implement than having them work individually. You will find that I present a number of such ideas and thoughts here that you will not find elsewhere in the literature, the reason being that many find them repugnant, just as they find the thought of having to recover from nuclear holocaust as being repugnant, and so therefore have not set their thought to the task.

Unfortunately, neither I, nor anyone else can guide you to finding answers for all the challenges that you will meet. One reason is that no single person understands all the technology of machinery design, agronomy, food preservation, dietetics, defense, social organization, and many other disciplines that are involved. I hope that what I provide you will be useful, but you must be prepared to learn much more - elsewhere.

Ancient people occasionally had garden plots by their door, but mostly the gardens were at the edge of the village or even three, four, five miles away. As we progress, you will see that there were a number of reasons for this.

Acreage Required

One of the first things to be determined is the scale of operation. Be assured that survival is a cooperative activity and that each family is not going to just grow enough for their family. We have predicated the Ark Two community on the concept of three thousand persons and I shall demonstrate here our manipulation of numbers.

Through studies and statistically it has been shown that one individual requires 1 bushel of corn to survive 50 days. There are variations of course depending on the size of the individual, the arduousness of the work being done by that individual, the seasons, the age of the individual (the very young and very old requiring less), what additional supplementary diet is available, and so forth. The quality of the corn and how it is prepared is one very large factor.

However, as with all statistics for groups, these individual facets are factored in and we end up with requiring about 7 bushels per person per year, so for our three thousand population we are going to need to have grown 21,000 bushels of corn for the second year, assuming we have enough stocks of food to get through the first year. Fortunately, we live in what is called "a bread basket". Others, will have to scale their requirements up or down depending upon their circumstances.

Now, assuming that we are capable of growing 21 bushels of corn per acre, we will then need 1,000 acres to grow 21,000 bushels of corn. Looking at it another way. Modern agricultural methods figure to feed 7 persons per acre and we are figuring to feed 3 persons per acre, so to feed 3,000 people we need 1,000 acres.

Size of the Fields

We are certainly not talking about a 1,000 acre field, although we have a great many that size adjacent to our village. Unfortunately, the land in all of them is now dead, as much farm land is elsewhere, having long been killed by modern agricultural methods of herbicides, pesticides, etc.

Nor are we even talking about a dozen 80 acre farms (as used to be the traditional size). Much of those eighty acres were taken up with house, barn, animal lots, road ways, separate fencing, brush and bush areas and much else. With our non-mechanized method of agriculture, we have to get down to about fifty farms, of whatever acreage, that each contain 20 acres of fields, for which we will have about 2000 people to attend the fields.

In native times the fields were mostly attended by women. The men did hunting and provided community protection. As will be seen later, children had to provide much of the protection to the fields. In our case each of the fifty farms will have about forty people cultivating its 20 acres. These twenty acres will be further divided into five four acre plots with eight people attending a plot - or perhaps ten 2 acre plots with four people attending each plot. The people would generally be women and children.

The men help on special occasions. Some tribes prepared and softened the land by burning fires on them, with which the men helped. In our case, having metal for plows, work crews of men could be brought in to help the women pull the plows and other implements. Because of the short time in which much needed to be done, the gathering was sometimes done as a festive occassion with men and women joining in - but the bulk of the hoeing, watering, weeding, and attending was left to the women and children. One woman could handle about one acre.

Land preparation and planting

The land has to first be plowed. In native times, broken up using wooden or bone instruments similar to a mattock which is shaped like a pickax, with an adze and a chisel edge as the ends of the head. The native way was to build mounds about three feet apart. The mounds were a couple of feet long and sloped towards the drainage. With plowing, rows are more efficient, but in our case still leaving two or three feet between the rows so that the plants may be given individual attention since we are using neither herbicides or pesticides and they must be individually weeded.