Fire on the Mountain Corn

We are harvesting our special corn. The seeds came from an amazing seed company called “Peace seedlings” located in Corvallis, Oregon. The corn is called ” Fire on the Mountain” and can be used as a sweet corn for eating right off the cob,  or dried for corn meal or flour. It is so beautiful!  This corn has cold hardy small colorful plants, with early beautiful dark multi colored cobs, a child of Painted Hill Sweet Corn. Bred by Peace Seedlings for climates like ours.

We planted the seeds in plugs in our hoop house and transplanted them into our garden on June 1.  We fertilized with a high nitrogen chicken manure mixed with Azomite initially and then fertilized weekly with a liquid fish fertilizer – all Organic!

It was a long, hot dry summer and I was not sure the corn would survive.  Our well ran dry and Ellen carried buckets of water from the pond to try and keep it alive.  The corn seemed to do quite well with all the heat though and developed quite well.

corn in the field

The deer did not bother the corn.  We were worried about that as there are no fences around our gardens here on the farm.  They may have been deterred by string of all things.  Ellen had marked off the rows with chest-high string attached to tall stakes and left them in place throughout the season.  The other farms around here use electric wire to keep cattle inside the fields.  The deer may have been afraid to nip at the corn because they thought the string was electrified.  Deer are smart though and we may have to put up some fencing next year.

We will harvest all of it this week and hang in from our rafters now that we are using our wood stove. Every ear of corn is different.  Each time we shuck a corn cob we get a new surprise.  The cob can be a deep red and purple kernels or a light yellow with striped red design.  We never know what we will get.  The tassels on the corn were also different colors:  deep red to light yellow and almost white.

I have been drying three ears of corn for a week and it is drying quite well.  We ate some of the corn for sweet corn a couple of week ago and I froze some cobs for use later.  The rest of the harvest will be devoted to drying the corn for making into corn meal and flour.

One of our farm goals is to raise food that can be stored over a years time so that we can be more self-sustaining.  We also want to raise our own seeds for replanting.  This variety of corn meets all the criteria for becoming a farm favorite crop.  Good work Peace Seedlings –Dylana Kapuler and Mario DiBenedetto.  If you would like to know more about this small organic seed company check out this link.