What's tough as nails, unwilting in winter cold, welcoming at the front door, and a favorite guest on movie night? If you said "flint corn," you've probably been hanging out with farmers. Long, long ago, corn was a wild grass with a small array of little starchy seeds. Over thousands of years, farmers have turned it into the plant we know today, with plump kernels making up large cobs, wrapped in papery husks. Sweet corn is the branch of the family that includes all the varieties we eat off the cob in high summer. Dent corn is one of the U.S.'s main agricultural crops. The kernels are dense with soft starch that's useful in animal feed and to industry. Flint corn may not be a term you've heard before but you certainly know what it is - it's popcorn, hominy, and the colorful ears of corn that are a popular decoration this time of year.
Flint corn was a Native American crop, and it was the kind of corn that Native Americans taught newly arrived Europeans to grow and eat. Dried kernels would have been eaten boiled like beans or ground into cornmeal. Named for the hard stones used to light a spark to start a fire, flint corn's sturdy kernels made a good storage crop for winter eating. In addition, it's low water content means it doesn't freeze easily, which made all the difference in 1816 when the northern hemisphere (including the American northeast) experienced the "year without summer" and resulting catastrophic crop failures.* After a summer of snow and frost, flint corn was the only crop that Vermont farmers were able to harvest. No wonder the corn has become a beloved symbol of our gratitude for a bountiful harvest.
As an ancient crop, flint corn has kept its old, heterogeneous appearance. Sweet corn was developed through selective breeding, keeping only the sweetest, palest, most tender kernels for each successive planting. Uniformity in each cob was the goal. But flint corn was under no such pressure and, even today, new breeds boast a giddy array of colors. Old breeds offer kernels that look like polished stones and new breeds come in bright jewel tones, one aptly named "stained glass" corn, to give you an idea of how bright the colors are. Can even this decorative corn be eaten? Yes! As long as it hasn't been lacquered, the corn could be popped, ground into meal or boiled to an edible consistency. If this isn't an appealing outcome for the decorative corn you pick up at the farmers market this weekend, just remember that it is entirely biodegradable. When you are ready to replace harvest festival decor with pine boughs, return your flint corn to nature by composting it or leaving it in the woods where animals can eat it.
* That was also the summer when a group of friends, including Mary Shelley and Lord Byron, distracted each other from the "incessant rainfall" by sitting around the house making up horror stories, like the one about Dr. Frankenstein's monster and another about a vampire that was a precursor to Dracula. Happy Halloween!
