 Hello and welcome to Farming Matters. It is a YouTube video series celebrating the work of our farmer rancher grant recipients and they're here to share stories about some of the lessons learned, what they did with their project, and just to share how it went. So I am Aaron Schneider. I am one of the hosts of Farming Matters. I work with the North Central Sare program. I also farm just outside of Wisconsin and I'm glad to be with producer and co-host Marie Flanigan. Hello. And we are both really delighted that Dulea Prieto is with us today. She is from Indiana and she is here to share insights and just work that she did with Heritage Corn. Hi, thank you. I'm so glad and so appreciative for this opportunity. So there's a lot of motivation on my end to work with Heritage Corn. I have a deep cultural and spiritual connection with corn but I need to be really direct about this. It wasn't just me in this project. This was a group of five farmers that worked together and we got a community of 20 planting families that got together to work and learn from Heritage Corn. So Heritage Corn, like we said, is so colorful, it's so beautiful and it has incredible nutritious and cultural value to all of the Americas. When I say the Americas, I mean from the northern part of Canada all the way down to Patagonia. So that's what I refer to as America. And you know corn was started to be bred from a sea called about 8,000 years ago and it was a human hands of caring families of people that wanted to enjoy and learn more from this precious grain seed. And so it's been families who have adapted this corn, taken care of it, distorted it, saved the seeds, made the process, moved the seeds from place to place. So I think it's important for families to regain this knowledge and this connection to Heritage Corn and to try to keep our sacred seeds and have more of them and learn more about their uses and just make them a part of our lives again. So that was one of the main motivations for this group to start this project. We wanted to work with families in their backyard plots with new farmers, experienced farmers, basically families that were interested in Heritage Corn. So we have a very diverse age group that participates families with children, middle-aged, older people participating in all sorts of activities. But we do face a really huge challenge being part of the corn belt in northern Indiana where there's hybrid and GMO corn about a mile close to anything. So keeping our Heritage Corn GMO free is one of the things that we tried to endeavor with this project as well as some other goals that we had. So how did we approach this whole thing? Basically there was more of a cultural and community and educational type of goal and then we had our research plots in which we were actually doing trial and testing to see if we could keep our corn free of GMOs. So in terms of educational opportunities we took a collaborative learning approach so people that participated in the project would get together and we would do Zoom classes, field sessions. We shared a lot of resources. Not everyone needs to have a huge pile of compost in their yard and we can share that. Not everybody has to buy a small bag of nitrogen fertilizer. We can get a huge bag and pass out what we need. We made some time for ceremony and for taking into consideration the cultural aspects of growing this kind of corn and how sacred and how special it is. We also took field trips to each other's farms, to other places, to universities to find people that were also growing native corn and we held events to teach the public about what we were learning as we were planting this corn. In terms of our research plots we did the control fields where we planted the corn and it was just open pollination and we also did, we had our testing fields in which we did open pollination and we also did hand pollination. So that's one thing that we learned in this project was to hand pollinate corn. Very very interesting, very time consuming and so then we compared how our corn did by submitting it for GMO testing, both the open pollinated and the hand pollinated. I'll talk about the results in a little bit which are very very exciting but we also tried to work with, since we're working with families, since we're working with people's backyards, we also tried to include those natural barriers that are suburban or natural, you know, prelines, buildings, fences, this type of thing to try to to see that could keep our corn safe within our family's backyards and we also used a late planting approach, trying to stay away from the pollination window of commercial corn either mostly by late planting so that our corn would start pollinating by the time the commercial corn was all basically done. So those were the things that we tried to look at, that we tried to approach but this is something that I'm really proud of and that is our planting families. I think the group really got together, really grew in collaboration. There were some incredibly knowledgeable people participating and offering their support, their council, a little trip to the backyard and seeing, you know, how things were going and there were also a lot of newcomers and new farmers and new gardeners with great ideas that were all put to the table and it all just flowed really, really well. So I'm really proud of the planting families that have really created a capacity to steward and to care for and to in some ways breed these sacred seeds. People were always willing to participate in events. We also had, we also explored during this project some of the culinary aspects, things that you can do once you have your corn, you know, and how to experience all that nutrition and all these things that come from the earth. So we always had people willing to necestimalize, to grind for hours, to try tortillas, to make cornbread, to make a dole, to try pinole. So there was a lot of working together and that's, I think one of the things that are key to highlight in this project. In terms of the more technical stuff, we were able to gather a very, very valuable set of data because we asked participants to track in a database that I'm going to show just a couple examples of in a minute. Their planting date, their first tasseling date, their harvest date. And this is super valuable because we worked with many different varieties of native corn. So now we have some great information about how early maturing a certain variety may be, how maybe wind resistant or how maybe it can be used in culinary uses or maybe how it may be vulnerable to certain insects or critters. So this is I think is a very, very good asset. I'm going to show a little bit of the database just because that is not something that I shared completely with my project reports. Oh, let me see here. Hold on. Okay. So here we have the 2021 database. I crossed out the name so for, you know, keep people private. But for instance, we tracked things like planting date, tassel date, harvest date, observations that people just, you know, some people lost all their crop to raccoons, for instance, number 10 here. And that was the end of the story for them that year. But I'd like to show you, we talked about it. We brainstormed how can this be fixed? And I'll show you next year what happened. As I was telling you, we were also tracking if people were able to save seed for replanting, many of them were able to, which really builds capacity. You know, some people were better at weighing their stuff than others. There's some objectivity into this database, but it's nevertheless very, very valuable. So observations on cooking, culinary uses. And we tried to track how many meals or how many things people might have prepared with the corn they had. We had people that had very small plots, and maybe they did a couple of things, you know. And then we had people, some of the research plots and some of the larger plots where we had, you know, an amazing amount of corn. And we were able to share that corn in our sessions. You know, it's not like, oh, it's my corn. I'm not going to share it. We all shared. And we were able to even have like a tortilla making spree with different varieties of corn and taste it and kind of see the difference between all the the corns that we were trying. So this was 2021. Like I said, these observations are super helpful for people that want to plant maybe this variety or this other variety of corn. And if we move over to 2022, I wanted to emphasize here on family number 10. The year previous, they had lost it to raccoons. This year, they mentioned here, I was successful in keeping raccoons out of the corn with a three wire electric fence powered by a solar charger. So, you know, the brainstorming, the collaborative learning, I think really helped this person get 11 pounds of this variety of corn and be able to work with it, you know, connect with this corn and hopefully plant it again in the following years. However, this person did mention they lost some more to rabbit damage. So for next year, they may want to talk about another type of fence or maybe turning it on earlier or, you know, what can we do? So there's a lot to be shared with this with this database. People were very participative. Like I said, some more than others, but it was a learning experience for everyone to kind of voice and have a place where we can concentrate all of this information. So that's one of the things that I would really like to highlight about this project. And if we go back to the presentation here, yeah, so about the Moroti, I will show it in person in just a little bit. But this is a picture of this corn. This is a corn from Paraguay that has been in the area for about seven years or so. So it's been adapting. It's very early maturing. The plants are short. So for us shorties, they're super convenient. There's also some of these native corns, especially some that are from like Mexico and some other altitudes are super tall or like, you know, well, feet tall and they're kind of hard to work with. So this Avati, I've personally grown this with my family for quite a few years, four or five years. And it's just so generous. It's so tasty. You don't even have to add salt to it. It is just naturally savory and delicious. Since it's short, it doesn't lodge as easily. So it's a very good variety for these times where we're experiencing so much climate change and so many things that are also putting some pressure on our native corn. The Walpole Island Whiteflower Corn, it's native to this region. It's native to, let's say, Upper Michigan, Southern Canada. And this is a very beautiful corn. Quite a few families grew this corn. It's a delicious taste, 90 to 110 days. It tolerates drought, it tolerates humid. It grinds very easily, very, very soft, smooth flour. So that's why I'm in love with these corns because they're just so diverse. As we move along here, like I said before, we had the opportunity to do GMO testing for several varieties of corn. And I'm not going to get too detailed into how we went about it. But in 2021, the fields that were hand pollinated, there was no GMO. The fields that were open pollinated, there was no GMO. And we managed this part through late planting. And in other fields, in other rubber testing fields, we had the same results. So we were just ecstatic that our corn was cleaned in every sense of the word. So we said, let's try it again for 2022, applying kind of the same things, late planting, natural barriers. And we tried to test that out with hand poll, with GMO testing. This time, we had many more seeds to send to the lab, which talks about how we were able to build up our seed bank. And we were able to say, oh, that's okay, take our 3,000 seeds. We have enough. So this time around, we got more specific. And we did a quantitative test. And our results were all well below the non-GMO project threshold of 0.9%. So we did it again. And that's something that I'm very, very, very proud of. And I have been very, very fortunate to participate in a project where we were able to use the funds for having a lot of people learn many, many things and test out our ideas. Now, I know that's not something that's cost effective for the real life practice. We can't go around hand pollinating things and sending kernels to labs. So I have some other pieces or words of advice for people that are interested in planting and learning from heritage corn. The first thing is record keeping, super, super important. Know your corn in a way that you can know how early or late maturing it can be, and know the corn around you so that you can manage your planting season in a way that your corn isn't pollinating at the same time as commercial corn. Staking and twining for tall corn, this saved a few plots from 2021 over to 2022. So yeah, it's a lot of hard work, but it really pays off when there's, you know, when your corn has to endure four or five or six heavy wind storms during the season. So that's another thing. Swagging while on the field, this is something I really recommend and it's an advice I take from my good friend, John Shirk, who was one of the main seed bearers for this project. He goes and he walks through his fields every day and that's something that I highly recommend now too because you can catch, you know, insects and infestations right away. You can track which plants are developing very nicely. You can just notice so many things and learn so many things by just staying on top of your corn, which is something that really attacks corn, especially native corn because of the lack of all these bug-resistant genes is we have used this BT. It is an ecological, biological insecticide. It's basilistorogenesis. When corn worms feed on it, their intestines paralyze and they die. So what we did was we sprayed, we diluted and then we sprayed in a spray bottle when silks appeared and two weeks later and that really, really helped keep that problem at bay. Needless to say, animals know what's good for them. They prefer non-GMO and organic. So definitely we need to keep very close attention because birds, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, they all love this corn. So another thing that we did as well, or for us, for many of us that could, was we used these mesh bags to put over the corn. So once the ear has formed and obviously it's in the, with the husk, then you put the mesh bag over it and you secure it very well at the bottom. Good nice knot. And this will help, maybe ants not get into your corn. This will help birds not get at your corn chipmunks. So if you do it early enough, it really helps. So that's another piece of advice I guess that I would like to share. But there's more, there's more. And these are just helpful tips that we learned through practice and experience. For drying, I know there's many native methods and things that people do and I think it's great. What we did was trying to dry them flat inside in a place that's well ventilated where they can get air from the bottom, from the top, from all sides. And it's really something key because it's super sad that after going through all the work and having a great harvest, it's super sad to lose it all to mold. So I know some traditions in some places they braid husks and they hang them up. I think that would also be a good way to keep things ventilated and molding away. Always key, collaborative learning, lean on experience people learn also from newer people. There's always great ideas. There were times like we had a participant who was growing a corn from Mexico that was about 15 feet tall and he wanted to do three sisters. And he says there's no shade. There's absolutely no shade that goes to the bottom to the ground. So I can't do three sisters. So we brainstormed and we said, well, why don't you try clusters of corn? And then the three sisters around that. And that was just something that we came up as a group as a way to help this person try to get his ideas on the ground. Another thing that is very, very important and dear to my heart is to make space for ceremony, for culture, for community. This corn is every little kernel has a huge story, has traveled, has adapted, has provided for. So there's just a lot to be thankful for and always to consider that it takes human hands for corn to grow and to change and to turn into what we eat. So that's something that I think is very important when we're talking about native corn. And finally adaptation is something super, super important. The first time I tried growing one of my corns as a family, we had eight years from about 100 years that we planted. And it was the first time that we planted a corn, that variety of corn in Northern Indiana. But we persevered and the next year we had more and the next year we had more. And now we have a good production of this corn and it's beautiful because corn adapts, that's what it's been doing for 8,000 years. So that would be a piece of advice, you know, don't, don't fear. So just keep trying. And like I said here with this picture here that my friend Tristan Nisly took, he's one of the group participants, you will never get bored with native corn. It is so beautiful, so colorful, so diverse. It has sustained, you know, plagues, flooding, you know, environmental situations, it has sustained, it has crossed boundaries and barriers. And it is still around and it's kind of our job as humans to keep it around and to give it its place as something nutritious and important to our culture and to our food system in every way. So I wanted to just kind of show you the stars of our operation here. The corn right here, the white one, this is the Walpole Island white flower. The three middle ones are all from one variety of Bofo corn from Mexico that my family and myself have been adapting for about four years. And this tiny one is the Avati Moroti that I was talking about. As you can see, the gene pool is just beautiful. And that's what makes this corn, that's what has made this corn survive throughout the times. It's this diversity. So we really don't mind if our corn crosses with another native corn. Obviously, we would like to keep the strains, the varieties kind of true to type. But really, when native corn crosses among each other, you just get a more powerful corn. So here they are live for you. Walpole Island white, it is a beautiful, beautiful corn. I just want people, I love to have people take a look, close look at it. Here's the Bofo corn. This is a corn from the Kora people of Najarit. It is a sacred corn. And it's used for many, for tortillas and many food purposes, but also for ceremony. And in this variety, you always get a black one at some point in time, which is the beautiful cross that causes these lilac kernels. And if you can see, some of them are even speckled. So it's just pure beauty. And then our tiny one never fails, so above resistant, so wind resistant, so tasty. You will always find at least one kernel, one black kernel in Avati Muroti. So that's something very curious in particular about this variety. And every time we've planted, we have always had one or two of these black ancient genes come up and show up on our field. When we talk about what's next, when we talk about what's next, I like to think that we are still working with planting families, that we have built a group that has enough confidence to want to keep planting and facing all these challenges. I would definitely like to work with more kids and more youth to get them interested in planting native corn and perhaps try some larger operations and see where this corn can actually start entering our food system in a clean way, in a way that respects it and everything like that. Those are kind of the plans. In 2021, my family and I planted very straight rows, very neat rows. But then in 2022, I said, let's get a little crazy, let's do a milpa. So along with our corns, we planted so many things. We planted beans and we planted squash, obviously for the milpa, but we also had tomatillos, we had chiles, we had an herb garden, so many things were going on, sunflowers. And that's how I think that native corn really likes to be. So maybe for another project or for later on, I would love to test a milpa system, maybe versus a regular row system and see the differences in yields and then soil fertility and things like that. Thank you for sharing, Zulea. Do you feel as you explore scalability that these corn varieties can coexist alongside other varieties as well? I think it's really tricky, but there are some larger studies around that demonstrate that this can be possible. If you are willing to kind of sacrifice a bit of your operation that's maybe next to a commercial field or something, there's a few rows. I think they talk about six to ten rows that you are probably going to get infected with GMOs and things like that. But if you have the capacity, which is what we're trying to build, if you have the capacity to have a larger field, a larger operation, you can probably be side by side. And if you use these techniques like maybe late planting and things like that, I think there's definitely a possibility for those two co-existing and for native corn to do really, really well. But I also see the deep value in this corn being kept in backyards, in family plots for sustenance and for out of consumption and for experimenting and for having that connection right out your door. And I have a lot of farmers, myself included, are always curious like how do you find these varieties without, I mean, it's also like, I'm sensitive to like, well, they're just within our family and we'll share where we can, but we want to make sure, or like how do you sort of, if someone wanted to seek that out or... Yeah, that has been an issue because we've been present, for example, at Seed Swaps, and we set up a table and we try to show people and people see the corn and they see the colors and they get all excited and they want seed and we have to ask a few questions before we share any seed out. You know, first of all, do you have the space for it? Second of all, we are talking about sacred seeds here. I mean, this is not seeds that you're going to be able to buy on Amazon or go, you know, or, you know, it's not like a seed that you're going to plant once and have to buy it again to plant. This is some, this is a commitment. So most of the seeds for our project we got from an incredible Seedsman that I mentioned before, John Shirk, but it is now our responsibility to keep them going and also have a very close eye on who we share them with as well. That's why it was so lovely to have this kind of network of families because we're all kind of in the same pages. Well, this is not just a seed packet that I bought someplace and, you know, I can go and get again if I lose it. I have a whole group that backs me up to maybe help me replant, but I know that I have this responsibility of being very conscious about who I'm sharing this with. I would love it if everybody, you know, wanted to plant this corn and have it at home and things like that. But it does take, like we experienced, it does take a little education, it does take some more commitment, and it does take that willingness to make that connection, definitely. Because if you ask any tribal member of, you know, any part of Continental America corn is a very sacred thing, you know, it's not something that we take lightly. What would you recommend to kind of get started? Maybe even things to do before you get this sacred seed? Yeah, I think that's a great question. Definitely the intention of growing this type of corn comes along with like what we've talked about a lot of a lot of responsibilities. So maybe the first thing I would tell them is, you know, you need to, you need to intention and bless the seed if it comes to you. It's because you are going to be planting it responsibly. So that's one of the things that maybe as a group, we tried doing these seed blessing ceremonies, seed planting ceremonies, so that we give that space. So that would be one of the things that I would recommend even, you know, before putting the seed in the ground. And for new people or people that want to just try to grow corn, this heritage corn, well, corn is a heavy feeder of nitrogen. So if you're able to get a soil test and find out, you know, how much nitrogen, useful nitrogen is in your soil, that would be very helpful. Also trying companion planting like Meadba style because the beans are going to provide a lot of the nitrogen that the corn needs. That would be another thing in association. I would also try to, for a person that's maybe starting and doesn't have a lot of seed or a lot of space, I would recommend growing in small clusters rather than rows to facilitate pollination. And to use when you're first starting to use all of your seed as your seed bank for the following season. You know, don't get all greedy about trying to eat corn on the cob and things like that right away because you're going to, you know, you're going to exhaust your seeds and then you're going to be left without. So that's something I had to do. I didn't taste my buffalo corn for two years. Now I eat it all the time and it's delicious, but I had to really keep my pause away from it and save it to be able to keep planting it. And also seed selection is very important. You know, once you have been able to plant a few seasons in which you used all of your seed bank, then what we recommend usually is if you have your beautiful cob that you chose that's going to be one of your your seed saving cops, then you take this middle portion and that middle portion is the one that you're going to use for seed saving and seed planting purposes because these the edges are going to be more likely to be maybe infested by an insect or maybe by an animal or maybe just not as true to type as this middle section. And there's a lot of Native American stories that make reference to this middle section for other maybe more anthropological reasons, but that would be some of the advice that I could give maybe a new grower for this type of corn. Oh, thank you. It would be so and just wishing you much success this season and for generations and families beyond. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate the space to share all these cool things.