Corny, Ten Different Ways
When we moved to Cane Creek 11 years ago we went from the haves to the havenots. We weren’t exactly affluent but we had what we wanted when we wanted. Moving here changed all that.
We sold our four acre estate and bought 77 acres of rough woodland with 8 tillable acres. After paying for the land, we had $7,000.00 left with which to build a house and barn, and live on while we were doing it. To get lumber for our house Mike and the two boys cut down trees, dragged them to the house with a horse and mule, and then sawed the logs into lumber on a sawmill he had previously built for that purpose.
They had the easy job. I had to learn how to feed the family on $10 or less each week. Fortunately I had spent the summer canning and had 300 quarts of fruits and vegetables to add to our larder. But when you divide 300 by one or two quarts a day and divide that by 5 fast growing kids and a mom and a dad, you don’t have much food. By November I knew we were in for a lean winter. When a man came by and offered to sell 100 pounds of cabbage for 10 cents a pound I decided it was a good idea. He told me if I placed the cabbage under our 12 X 16 foot cabin and covered it with hay it would keep all winter. Another lady sold me 100 pounds of sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes, which we also kept under the cabin covered with hay. Still you divide the pounds of food with the mouths to feed by the days and you don’t have many days to eat.
I guess the old man down the road figured the dumb city folks needed a helping hand. He brought over a small sack of brown looking rough corn meal. He explained to me this was just field corn, the kind you feed to animals. Any dried corn will do. You can buy it straight from a farmer or from your local farmers co-op. It is cheaper than potting soil. This past year we paid less than $3.00 per bushel. A bushel will fill up two five gallon buckets. A pick-up truck full would only cost $50.00. It is easy to store. Some farmers just dump it in an open bin in the barn. You can put it in barrels, buckets, or boxes. It must be kept dry, and in warm weather it must be sealed or the bugs will eat it. There are easy ways to kill the bugs before sealing it in buckets. You could get that information from a library (as long as they remain open). But we planned to eat it before the next summer. A bug or two never hurt anybody anyway.
He told me to roast it lightly in the oven (Indians put the whole cob in warm ashes until it roasted to a golden brown) and then grind it coarsely with my cheap little flea market grinder. If you didn’t have a grinder, you could do as the Indians did—beat it with a piece of wood. For breakfast every morning we would stir it into boiling water to make a delicious hot cereal. Our neighbors call it corn mush. A bushel or two will provide breakfast for the family throughout the winter. The first time we tried it we added a little cream given to us by a neighbor. It was delicious. You will recall that roasted corn was what Boaz offered Ruth when he woke to find her at his feet. The leftover corn mush soon firms up and can be sliced and pan fried to make an evening snack. The snack would never make it to McDonalds as a famous special, but it was almost free, and filling.
