Tag Archive for 'corn'

Where the Corn came from, and gardener’s porn

Published on January 14, 2008 in gardening and what they eat. 2 Comments

I called the feed coop this morning to find out what kind of corn I had bought for the wild turkeys.  I thought I would be walking into the old Vermont joke where a lady tourist asks a farmer “Could you tell me the name of this flower?” And he says, “Ma’am, in these parts we call ‘em ‘wildflowers’.”

But it wasn’t like that at all.  Instead, the woman on the phone yelled: Joe, where’d that corn come from?  Towaoc, he said.  I asked, Is it genetically modified?  She yelled, Joe, is that GM corn?  Nope. 

Towaoc is a tiny town on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation, 60 miles due west.  According to the 2000 US Census, the population is 1,097 and it’s 94.4% Native American.  And perhaps one of the reasons that corn was so cheap–$20 for 100 pounds cracked, sacked and loaded–is that family income in Towaoc averages $18,796.   

If I was a turkey and could pick out which strain I’d want those Indians in Towaoc to grow, I’d go straight to the Seed Savers Exchange, a catalogue that specializes in really old varieties.  Seed catalogues are like gardener’s porn, and every gardener has a pile hidden somewhere.  The specimens are all impossibly perfect… is it airbrushed?  So plump and bodacious, and the pictures all glisten… do you think they spray them with oil?  When the snow is deep some of us succumb to temptation. 

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Not me.  I only look at seed catalogues when I’m trying to figure out what kind of corn I’d like if I was a turkey.  The Mandan Bride for sure, and I think the Black Aztec.   And we can’t stop there: some Indian beans

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Either the Hidatsa Red and the Painted Pony, or the Hidatsa Shield Figure and the Rattlesnake Snap… hard choice.  And finally

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I have to drop all pretense that I have the slightest interest in vegetables and get down to the serious business of choosing a sunflower for next year; I’m leaning towards Torch. 

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A Fowl Dilemma

Published on January 11, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey. 3 Comments

Turkeys are such big birds that many men think they look like dinner.   

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I know it’s more trouble than dinner is worth because fifteen years ago an old bachelor farmer gave me a tom of his that had been hit by a car.  It took an unreasonable number of repulsive steps to get that turkey into a pan for seasoning, and then you’re left with a big pair of feet that you’re supposed to boil up for soup and just can’t.  It’s horrible, and the local slaughterhouse doesn’t take poultry.  That’s one problem.  The other problem is that these turkeys have been running around scavenging since the day they hatched.  No doubt they’d make a tasty stew boiled down for 48 hours, but they really aren’t a roast meat you’d want to face without special knives.  They’d be tough as boots, but even so people often talk about killing them.   

The real problem, though, is that turkeys are a new addition to the neighborhood.  Miss Roberta says they’re the first local flock since she moved here in the 1940s.  And they’re bold, with regular rounds that include gardens up and down the road.  This fall, four of them began roosting in the trees by our upper irrigation ditch.  And then on Christmas Day there were eight turkeys marching around, and there has been a flock of six or eight ever since. 

With such deep snow, the turkeys are looking thin.  So I just happened to stop by the Feed Coop, kind of pretending I wasn’t,

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and I just happened to get 100 lbs of cracked corn.  It just happened.  Let’s just say that it happened because every woman loves to see a man in Carhartt’s canvas workclothes moving heavy sacks.   

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And I put a few cups of cracked corn out for the turkeys (who really did look thin, and who people keep mentioning in the same sentence as dinner).

After the deed was done, I looked up the Department of Wildlife’s opinion on feeding turkeys.  I learned that these Merriam’s wild turkeys live in the high Ponderosa forests of the Southwest, total population 334,460 to 344,460.  And here’s the twist–Merriam’s wild turkey is the exact same turkey as the domesticated turkeys that lived with the Pueblo Indians.  It is believed the ancestral Puebloans brought these turkeys from Mexico, and when the ancestral Pueblo culture died out around 1400 AD their turkeys ran off to the forests and are still there today as Merriam’s wild turkey. 

So this is my story and I’m sticking to it: I’m not feeding wild turkeys at all; I’m raising a flock of ancestral Puebloan turkeys.  These gals lay 10 to 12 eggs in a clutch, so a sidebar of corn through a tough winter might make all the difference.  The turkeys live here year-round, so everyone knows where to find them.  It’s so easy to see a turkey, and there are so many hunters.  Dilemma.