The Three Sisters
(Page 6 of 6)
February/March 2001
By John Vivian
Dry corn can be shucked of its husk by rubbing pairs of cobs together to loosen the kernels. Today you can purchase old-time mechanical one-ear cornshellers or small disc-shaped hand-held shellers from the homesteading catalogs. I keep seed safe from mice in surplus ammo cans, larger quantities of grain keep well in steel garbage cans with the tops well secured. Fifty-gallon steel drums would be more secure.
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Dry corn is easily stored in a crib, such as the small air-drying corn crib with aluminum pie plates under its legs to keep rodents out.
The best way to deal with beans is to pull dry vines, heap them on a sound tarp, stomp on them to split dry pods, and run a finger down both halves to remove seeds. Then drop handfuls of beans in a good wind so that chaff flies off.
Hubbards and butternut squash will keep for almost a year if the temperature remains cool and the air dry. We store winter squash in a dry cellar room kept from freezing by wood-stove heat piped down a floor duct or just radiating from the ground floor.
Saving Seed
Native Americans learned thousands of years ago that the best planting seed comes from the fattest kernels at mid-cob of a corn ear; in addition, they also knew that it comes from the most uniform and fattest-sounding uncracked beans and squash seed.
Seed to be saved is cleaned and sundried-indoors on a windowsill or in the shelves over a woodburning range. I have gotten into the habit of jotting down the details of its history and enclosed note and seeds in paper bags (to let drying air in and out) and store them in my ammo boxes - left open a crack - on a high shelf in my always-warm kitchen.
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