Grains and Grinding
Emma Stewart '08
Food For Thought Seminar, Fall 2008
Grains are perhaps the most important source of calories for many cultures around the world. Botanically, grains are technically the fruits of grasses; culturally they are the basis for many diverse diets. They can be prepared in many different ways, but grinding grains into meal or flour is method of diversifying the means by which they can be cooked and consumed. Processing grains requires drying of the fruit, removing the inedible, cellulosic husks or cobs, and finally grinding them to create the powder we know as flour. Before mechanical milling operations were built, pioneer families had to grind by hand the corn, wheat, and rye they had grown. In American history, this was often done using mortars made from logs with a cavity burned out (Haseley). This was hard, time-consuming work, and mills run by water power employing large stone grinding wheels soon became the method by which whole grains were ground into flour.
This is dried Iroquois heiloom white corn. All of it was grown in the heritage garden.
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The device is two heavy stones: one large flat slab with short legs and a depression in the middle, and another smaller hand-held stone that fits into the depression. To grind corn, one puts corn into the depression and runs the stone back and forth (with a lot of pressure!) over the corn kernels until they are broken into corn meal. The more pressure one applies, the more efficient the grinding is, so the women who use metates kneel or squat over the device so as to get good leverage.
Growing, harvesting, drying and grinding your own grains is indeed a lot of work. I learned this first hand this fall. I harvested about 40 ears of Iroquois heirloom white corn in late September from the 1812 Garden. We lost some kernels to insects, some to fungus, some to unpollinated stamens, and some to poorly developed grains, but the harvest was quite bountiful overall. The corn was harvested later than one would harvest sweet corn for eating on the cob; the kernels were big, white, starchy, and relatively dry. We left all the corn to dry on the cobs in a dry attic except one ear; this one was left in my car for several weeks, where it probably cooked at low temperatures. Those dried in the attic had more of a corn taste compared to the ear left in the car which actually tasted a little milky.
Once they were completely dry, I knocked the kernels off the cobs by hand; it took about an hour and half to do 40 ears, but the grains alone looked impressive.
This is me grinding the corn by hand at the co-op
I let the kernels dry off the cob for a few more days in a warm area, and then it was time to grind. I used a hand-crank grinder in the Woollcott Co-op that has gears that adjust to give either finer or grainer flour. The finer the flour, the more difficult the crank was to turn, so I opted for an intermediate grain size. The grinding took about 2 hours total. At first it was fun and as the novelty wore off I was able to recruit volunteers who wanted to try it for themselves as well.
We have a metate, but the mano is too wide to fit into the depression and the grains slip through without being ground. I tried it out anyway, just to get a feel for what it would be like. It certainly felt like a lot of work, kneeling and grasping the heavy stone in my hand.
This picture is me modeling how to use the metate y mano
The finished product of my grinding is about 7 or 8 pounds of corn meal, ready to be made into Iroquois cornbread, or in the Mexican tradition, tortillas. It was hours upon hours of work for this small amount of corn meal – and I didn’t even have to plant or care for the corn this summer. It is humbling to realize just how much work goes into growing and processing grains. No wonder the Aztecs had such reverence for maize and the metate; such a huge part of their lives were dependent on them!
References
Haseley, Janey Long. “History of the Renssalaerville Grist Mill.” 1996.
“Metate.” 2008. Mexicolore. 11 Nov 2008. <http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/index.php?one=azt&two=art&tab=two&id=104>.
Smith, S. E. “What is a Metate?” 2008. Wisegeek. 29 Sept. 2008. <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-metate.htm>.
Yaguda, Rebecca. Personal interview. 11 Nov. 2008.
How closely our culture and agricultural practices are tied! The Three Sisters is not only an Iroquois farming system but is also an agricultural custom steeped in legends and myths. In this planting system, corn, pole beans and squash are planted together, or interplanted, in mounded hills. “Corn, beans, and squash are considered by the Iroquois to be special gifts from the Great Spirit” (Eames-Sheavly). Each of these crops is believed to be protected by one of the ‘Three Sisters,’ a group of spirits collectively called “De-o-ha-ko” or “our sustainers” (Eames Sheavly). The legend of the sisters chronicles how they lived happily together in a field, and were harvested one by one. The smallest of the sisters (representing the bean) was harvested in late summer. The second sister (representing squash) was harvested at the beginning of fall and the third sister (corn) was harvested in late fall. While The Three Sisters together provided a varied diet, the system was also carried on as a means of respectfully using the land as interplanting has numerous ecological benefits. Beans, a member of the legume family, are nitrogen fixing plants, meaning they take nitrogen from the air and convert it into a compound that acts as a natural fertilizer. When the beans are harvested, the fixed nitrogen in their roots is released, and fertilizes the ground for the next year’s crop (which is extremely beneficial as corn needs a high amount of nitrogen in order to flourish). The corn acts as a support for the pole beans, while the squash grows out over the soil helping to control the weeds. 