Floriani Red Flint Corn

Success!

My father told me about this rare and unique corn called Floriani Red Flint last year.  I was intrigued by the impressive nutritional content and the history of the corn and read up about it online to learn more.   

The corn is a family heirloom variety that is non-GMO and open-pollinated and was a landrace from the Vulsagana Valley, in northern Italy.  It was only brought over to the US in the last few years.  The nutritional profile for this corn is unbelievable.  You can read more about the history and the nutrition at Mother Earth News.  Here is a graphic I found detailing the nutritional content as compared to cornmeal typically found at the supermarket.  Very impressive!

It is extremely difficult to get some of the seed and my father wanted me to grow some so that we could give him some for his gourmet cornmeal passion.  Stark Round Barn Farm in Nebraska offers the ground cornmeal but they are always sold out.  I finally did find some of the seed and we took the plunge and splurged and bought some for a little experiment and to try it for ourselves.

We've never grown corn before but we all worked together and enjoyed learning something new and we are pleased to say our corn did very well!

In April we paid someone to plow up a small plot at the end of our hay field that has good drainage.

 Then we had him till it for us and after that we were on our own.  

We don't own any equipment yet so we just used good old fashioned elbow grease and ingenuity to get the job done.  We planted in mid-May.

Steve came up with the ingenious idea of using baling twine and scrap stakes leftover from when he worked at Teeter's Factory and marked off rows for us to follow and that kept everything perfectly straight and tidy.

Then we used a ruler and marked off on dowel rods how far to space the seeds and worked in teams of two.  

One person would use a longer dowel rod to poke a hole into the ground and a smaller person would come along and drop a seed down into the hole.  

The children had a fun time singing old spirituals as we worked (in harmony!) as they pretended they were slaves out working in the field.  What a fun and sweet memory. :) 

Some of the children also worked independently and we got the job done.  

Just after we finished planting we had several days of rain all in a row and we all felt so blessed that God so graciously watered our corn for us so generously.  By the time the rain stopped we had corn coming up!

We had read that you should put 2 seeds in the hole to insure that you have a germinated seed in each spot but we decided to just do one and every single seed germinated into a lovely plant.  Amazing germination rate!

Here is the corn in June coming up nicely.

Then we watched in fascination as our corn grew.  The weeds grew, too, and we had no way to till or fertilize along the way but we had planted the corn in an area that we had focused on having Girlfriend (may she rest in peace) and the goats graze and fertilize before and hoped it would be rich enough for the corn to thrive.  

The corn was more than knee-high by the fourth of July! 

We waited in anticipation as the corn ripened and began drying.  Neighbors told us horror stories of losing crops to critters and birds but Emily's dog, Jessie, did a good job keeping them at bay and finally the day came to harvest our crop.

It was such a beautiful evening!

  There was one of those sunsets where you feel as if you are basking in a warm and glorious golden light. It was so brilliant and intense you could feel it on your skin and it seemed as if our skin was almost glowing.

Everyone was so excited to harvest our corn experiment.

  It was incredibly satisfying and rewarding working together again to harvest our corn!

We used buckets and pulled all the ears off the stalks and piled them in the wheelbarrow to take them to the house to be husked and shelled.

Then we took two days off from working on our kitchen remodel project and focused on getting the corn worked up.  We had teams that husked and everyone helped pop the kernels off the cobs.  This is a smaller ear that was Samuel's special corn.  He husked it so that it looked like the corncob had hair.

We saved some of the cobs to decorate our table for our Thanksgiving meal.  They are so beautiful! 

 A deep, lovely, almost glowing shade of vibrant red.

The corn when ground is beautiful as well.  It has a pinkish hue to it.  And it smells so fragrantly rich and delicious!

We baked some cornbread in our trusty cast iron skillet and it was beautiful, too.

Every piece was savored!

The flavor was outstanding!  Mmmmmmm...it was rich and sweet and complex and outrageously, extravagantly delicious!  

Of course, I may be biased by all that went into growing it.  But I did take it to a ladies club meeting and everyone that tried a piece exclaimed on it's moist and scrumptious flavor.  I went home with a nearly empty pan. :)

We offer both the seed for sale as well as the freshly ground cornmeal at our Etsy shop if you'd like to try it for yourself or try growing it for yourself.  Stop on over to Genuine Ozark at Etsy and visit us for more information or drop me a convo if you have any questions!