Indian Corn Door Decoration

[Nyboy]

I just hung 3 ears of Indian corn on my door. Every Oct my mother would hang 3 ears of colorful corn on the front door for Halloween/ Thanksgiving. It would stay up till door was decorated for Christmas. I now do the same every year, always 3 ears, I was wondering if this has some meaning that has been lost though the years? Is " Indian Corn' PC ? I grew up calling pomegranates Chinese apples, know that is not PC anymore.

 

[seedcorn]

If it isn't, then something is wrong as it gives credit to the ones before us as to saving first settlers. Of course our PC board probably has forgotten all USA history. There is nothing derogatory about that term.

Chinese apples is derogatory? Why?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Three was a strong powerful number for the Celts and the Celts had a tremendous influence on Halloween. I just watched a documentary on that Thursday night. Halloween is basically a Celtic holiday. I don't know if your mother's use of three relates to that or not.

To me there are different kinds of political correctness. One is where you don't go out of your way to call someone something derogatory or demeaning. Some people call that being raised a Christian. Others seem to take offense at not being able to call someone something derogatory.

On the other hand you have some people that are so easily offended they cut off any reasonable discussion on a topic. A lot of times these are real problems that need to be honestly discussed to try to find an answer but the rhetoric and noise won't allow any honesty in the discussion.

Another one is where people want to rewrite history. They want to judge historical people by today's standards. Those people did not live in today's world, they lived in a totally different world. I'd like to think I make moral decisions but I don't have a clue what people a couple of hundred years from now will find politically acceptable or morally repulsive. I just do the best I can.

By my standards there is nothing wrong with "Indian corn". I don't know why "Chinese apple" is offensive either but I have never heard that phrase. What is the context that makes it offensive? The Greek myth of Persephone features the pomegranate.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I imagine because pomegranates are not Chinese, they are Middle Eastern.

As for Indian Corn it's hard to say. While certainly it was the Indians who first grew it (though I suppose you could argue that we should have changed the name to "Native American Corn" some time ago) there is the fact that for a long while "Indian" was a slang word for "fake" or "bogus" in American parlance (as in "Indian Summer" "Indian Giver" etc.) Given that "corn" was at the time I general term for all grains, and maize was generally looked upon as a lower grain, suitable only for the poor and servant/slave classes (hence the old slave saying "we grow the wheat and they give us the corn") there might have been some insult involved. It probably doesn't help that ornamental corn is usually flint corn (well, the full size stuff is, the little ones are usually popcorn) which was often considered the low man on the edible corn totem pole (you would grow it if your climate was too wet and too pest ridden for anything else to survive well, but it was the hardest to grind (you needed a good mill to do it on a big scale) and did not make the soft flour most Europeans were used to.)

As for why we do it, I think it is just a fall thing; a symbol of the harvest being in (in Europe, they sometimes would make little ornaments of braided ears of wheat and barley, I imagine for the same reason)

Speaking of ornamental corn, I've noticed it has been in short supply this year (or at least shorter supply than it usually is) with a lot of places that I would normally get it opting out. This is even truer for the kinds I seek out (the ornamental corn of the fall is the main source for my seed for the next planting season, and I am very selective of what I get) Maybe it's the bad season we had (though due to the season being off, most of the corn sold this year was actually grown last year; maturing after it was seasonally salable and stored for now) As usual, Shantz farms came through a little (though with the A&P's having been taken over by the Acmes, the number went down a lot, since only one of them seemed to decide to sell corn this year) but even there the quality is now what I was used to (I've gotten four bunches so far (so twelve ears) but only one of those was really "A" grade stuff (and I think their supply has been exausted for the season by now). There's a stand at Union Square that gave me a little of the stuff I wanted too, but again, there isn't much and I have probably tapped that out by now.

The stand in Hartsdale has LOTS of corn, but none of it is the stuff I am after (I think I found one ear I could use last year, but that was an anomaly)

My favorite corn stand there HAS gotten in some (they skipped the last two years) but this years stuff is not nearly as interesting as it has been before (what made me love that stand is that their incredible diversity of starter seed, combined with a policy of not being careful to segregate and re-planting from their leftover stock meant that you often got ears with combinations that you would NEVER see in the normal path of things, like mico sized (popcorn sized) ears of dent corn, or flour or even sweet. ) But this year it's been much more standard (maybe my heavy buying in previous years rouged out most of the interesting stuff) there's some odd colors, and a few ears with kernels that are sort of cloudy (as in approaching floury) but that's about it.

Oh and I have gotten two ears with kernels for the sugar bottle (the bottle where I put any sweecorn kernels I find on ornamental corn, with an aim of trying to make a multicolored corn on the cob of my own)

And so far that has been all (I know that sounds like a lot, but I tend to go through HUNDREDS of ears a season, that's only about couple of dozen) There is a third stand that seems to have gotten in some of the popcorn version of Glass Gem (that's good, since my old supply of the stuff on dowels dried up with the loss of A&P, but as yet I have seen no ears with a better color mix than the ones I saved from last year) and some bright red dent (maybe Bloody Butcher) which is of interest (I haven't bought any since it seems a little dull,but if I was buying corn to grow grind and eat, it would probably be just what I was looking for.)

 

[seedcorn]

Sellable ears may be scarce since this was a bad ear worm year. Molds n the field corn again due to worms and the birds stripping the ears after the worms.

 

[Nyboy]

Thanks guys always learning here.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Sellable ears may be scarce since this was a bad ear worm year. Molds n the field corn again due to worms and the birds stripping the ears after the worms.

Didn't think of that, that's probably a factor too (we seem to be looking at a "perfect storm" situation.

But it can get worse. Remember how I said that most corn sold this year was harvested last year and stored. Well, when I first found that, it was obvious it had been stored for SEVERAL years (or stored in very poor conditions) it actually had GRAIN MOTHS living in it. Normally, rejected ears get re-bound and put on the door, but I couldn't with that stuff because I couldn't find three ears in the near hundred ears I bought that were intact! I actually had to re-go through each batch of seed several dozen times just to rouge out ones with living moth larvae in them (I know you can freeze corn to kill the moths, but with my little space, I don't have the luxury of leaving kernels that are already eaten out in the mix)

On the other side of the coin, I once found a little bodega on the upper east side that, for some reason was selling ears of ANDEAN corn for Indian corn. That stuff formed the basis of my experiments with colored Andean for quite a while (I still have tiny amount of a few of them)

 

[Nyboy]

Home depot label says Indian corn

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Actually despite what I said, it occurs to me that, if NO ONE grew flint corn except when they were desperate, there would be no Corn Belt. According to legend, at some point in the late 18th or early 19th century, a farmer around the Carolina/Maryland-ish area planted a field with Carolina Gourdseed (a broad kerneled, softish corn grown in the South) only to have about half the plants knocked out early by a storm. Not having any more Gourdseed he filled in the spaces with a northern flint. The resultant interbreed proved to be superior to both in terms of productivity (having some of Gourdseeds ease of grinding and the flint's disease resistance) and spread west with the pioneers.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Following up on NYboy's info, I check the Home Depot's corn yesterday. Again plenty, but nothing really I could make use of (I bought one bunch that looked a little floury, but home and shelled it's more like cloudy) and as (as far as I know) the farm that grows for them just grows ornamental corn, there is no chance of stuff for the sugar bottle (those errant sweet corn kernels show up because farmers are growing sweet (corn on the cob) corn too close to their ornamental corn, and there has been some cross contamination)