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A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

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11–20 of 39 posts

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#11
Wow, fantastic color.

Corn of this type would be useful in decorating Mitchell, South Dakota's "World's Only Corn Palace".

Each year, the Corn Palace (a huge building) is decorated on the outside with colorful murals, all made of corn.

If you can't visit for real, consider making a virtual visit:

https://cornpalace.com/

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#13
post #12

Kerning on the font for the title here on HN makes it look like it says Com. It's weird though, because in the comments it doesn't look that way. Corn.

I think it is a Verdana thing. Title is 13px, comments are 12px. Increasing the font to 13 does the same thing to comments.

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#14
post #2

I bought a bottle of Jimmy Red bourbon from High Wire for a coworker (I got super lucky - it was one of maybe a dozen left), and he reported that it had a lot of flavor -- very natural tasting, and not like anything that comes out of a production distillery. As much as Tito deserves his success, calling his vodka "handcrafted" is a major stretch when you've got a spirit like this that has true heritage behind it.

[deleted]

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#15
I love this story.

Wild/forgotten cultivated crop seeds are fascinating to me.

I pick, taste and save as many different wild foods that I can find.

I have found wild chives growing on an island in northern ontario, they're flowering in my backyard right now actually!

I have sampled hundreds of different mulberry trees and saved the best tasting and largest berries to hopefully one day create a mulberry farm.

I have even found a very rare (in my neck of the woods at least) red mulberry tree that flowers and produces fruit all season long. (Whereas most mulberries produce berries once en masse, which ripen towards the end of june or early july). This mulberry produces fruit from june all the way into october/november for some reason.

I found an italian plum tree growing near my house that I picked clean and saved hundreds of pits from last year.

My white whale is a local pawpaw tree that I have yet to find growing anywhere in the local forests, despite many other foragers fruitful finds.

There are delicious fruits all around you. Rosehips are actually quite tasty fruits as well, surprisingly!

Go take a look the next time you're out for a walk and try to figure out what that bulbous berry or fruit is you're looking at. It probably tastes better than you think!

(But don't eat it until you are 100% sure what it is of course!)

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#16
There's a market power story here. If one grows a perishable crop, like onions (or even hogs, in countries with centralised meatpacking), one is at the mercy of the markets that season. If one can store the crop (corn->bourbon, poppies->opium, etc.) then, for the price of the processing, one has a lot more options about when to sell and can attempt to get better prices.

(I live in a jurisdiction where people come around the villages with stills on trailers, and will distill your excess fruit production. Some farmers even leave their extra bottles on a table in the farmyard, with a box for the money when we non-farmers stop by to buy some)

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#17

I love this story. Wild/forgotten cultivated crop seeds are fascinating to me. I pick, taste and save as many different wild foods that I can find. I have found wild chives growing on an island in northern ontario, they're flowering in my backyard right now actually! I have sampled hundreds of different mulberry trees and saved the best tasting and largest berries to hopefully one day create a mulberry farm. I have e…

> I found an italian plum tree growing near my house that I picked clean and saved hundreds of pits from last year.

Don't all plum trees need to be grafted? I was fairly sure that planting most fruit trees including plums from seeds would mostly result in small sour fruits (and in the case of wild plums from my childhood: almost thorny branches)?

I am quite hesitant to ask since you seem to be quite into this and I only have some superficial knowledge about fruit farming but then again we are here to learn aren't we :-)

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#18
post #17

I love this story. Wild/forgotten cultivated crop seeds are fascinating to me. I pick, taste and save as many different wild foods that I can find. I have found wild chives growing on an island in northern ontario, they're flowering in my backyard right now actually! I have sampled hundreds of different mulberry trees and saved the best tasting and largest berries to hopefully one day create a mulberry farm. I have e…

> I found an italian plum tree growing near my house that I picked clean and saved hundreds of pits from last year. Don't all plum trees need to be grafted? I was fairly sure that planting most fruit trees including plums from seeds would mostly result in small sour fruits (and in the case of wild plums from my childhood: almost thorny branches)? I am quite hesitant to ask since you seem to be quite into this and I o…

I also have only superficial knowledge, but I think you would have to first obtain the "wild" version from the pits, and then graft it to produce edible fruit.

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#19
Cool story.

I have a similar interest in barley for brewing. I like to find heritage or land race varieties to try.

I often use Maris Otter[1], which is quite easy to obtain. However, others like Hana[2] and Chevallier[3] can be more difficult to buy.

Scottish Bere[4] is another grain I'd like to try, but haven't been able to find any for sale, either whole grains or malted. Seems like only flour is available.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maris_Otter

[2] https://crispmalt.com/news/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-hana-...

[3] http://zythophile.co.uk/2013/04/15/revival-of-ancient-barley...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bere_(grain)

Re: A Nearly Extinct Bootlegger's Corn Gets a Second Shot (2018)

#20

I love this story. Wild/forgotten cultivated crop seeds are fascinating to me. I pick, taste and save as many different wild foods that I can find. I have found wild chives growing on an island in northern ontario, they're flowering in my backyard right now actually! I have sampled hundreds of different mulberry trees and saved the best tasting and largest berries to hopefully one day create a mulberry farm. I have e…

Every summer when I went to my grandparents home I would climb up the Guava and Mulberry trees to pick the ripest fruits. My big regret is that the house was sold off to some builder who cut it into smaller houses getting rid of all the lovely trees (there were many, including one I don't know what the English name is). Now I live in an apartment in a city with no hope of being able to recreate this experience for my kids. You can't even buy mulberrys where I live, and Guava is worth gold without the lovely taste. But what really is a Rosehip?
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