Corn/Maize aka Zea mays

Corn takes many forms and appears in many colors. Dent corn is used for roasting (elote), tamales, tortillas, corn beer and animal feed. Flour corn is soft grinding corn used for cornmeal, elote and hominy (masa or nixtamal). Flint Corn is favored as an all purpose corn, as it stores better and has greater resistance to insect damage. Popcorn (a type of flint corn) is toasted, ground (pinole) or popped. And sweet corn is used for pinole, as well as eaten fresh in the milk stage. Corn kernels may be yellow, red (from pale pink to scarlet), white, brown, blue, purple and striped. Every part of the corn plant is useful, supplying food for humans and animals, fodder, crafts material, even the pollen is collected for ceremonial and medicinal purposes.

10,000 years ago

A paper presented at the June meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists (held in Merida) suggests that maize may have been domesticated as early as 10,000 years ago.

Dr. John Jones, Washington State University and his colleagues are using paleobotanical evidence (pollen etc.) to reconstruct the early history of maize agriculture. Analyzing sediments from San Andres, Tabasco, the data suggests agriculturalists were active in the Yucatan around 7,000 years ago.

Another report indicates that maize initially appearred in Peu more than 6,000 years ago.

Blessing of the animals

On May 15th, as part of the celebration of the feast of St. Isador the Farmer, the priest blesses the seeds for the milpa along with the oxen and assorted other critters. Following morning mass, the priest comes from the church into the courtyard where people are waiting with oxen, burros, horses, chickens, ducks, doves, kittens and puppies. The neighborhood street dogs have joined the festivities as well. Someone has brought a turquoise plastic tub of recently born puppies, eight curled like large beans into the blanket. The yokes of the pairs of oxen are decorated with paper flowers, streamers, blossoms of pink and white frangipani, and, in one case, a silver child's pinwheel on a stick. The priest scatters holy water onto the animals and the baskets filled with corn and bean seeds and in a few short minutes the blessing is completed.

overdue

Short list of what has happened since the last post
December in San Felipe (photos incorporated into the online portfolio)
May in San Felipe to photograph the blessing of the animals (portfolio posted soon)
Additions to the Milpa library
Histories of Maize-multidisciplinary approaches to the prehistory, linguistics, biogeography, domestication and evolution of maize by Staller, Tykot, Benz, etal, and
Corn among the indians of the upper Missouri, by Will & Hyde

Of more immediate note this year's deck milpa (photo soon) was planted at greater depth than last year and has grown without check and much faster, accompanied by runners of bean plants grown with seed from Mauro's milpa in San Felipe. If the good weather holds we will have ears of corn come fall.

Nanaimo milpa November 2007

Tenacity of corn

Our deck milpa, 3 plants grown from Oaxaca seed remain standing tall in their narrow, black pots. Beans and squash long gone. Two small ears to each plant, miniscule sprays of silk, tired tassels empty of pollen waiting for the fall storms here on Vancouver Island. We'll try again next year.

Leaving for the milpa

Leaving for Oaxaca this morning—a float plane from Nanaimo to Vancouver, Mexicana to DF and then to Oaxaca by tonight. I'll be in San Felipe for three days to photograph the milpa—which is now ripe—and family and community life. In the next couple of weeks we'll post a second portfolio for the project. Should be beautiful, the end of the rainy season, the green maize.

Patrick