The goal today was to clear the field but also to find any remaining crops for the harvest. We knew we had lots of seed corn and dry beans to harvest from the milpa but also found a few remaining squash. From the greenhouse we were
The goal today was to clear the field but also to find any remaining crops for the harvest. We knew we had lots of seed corn and dry beans to harvest from the milpa but also found a few remaining squash. From the greenhouse we were able to get our swan bottle gourds, some remaining chile, some cucumbers, and some eggplant.
The dry beans were a bit damp from an overnight rain so we put the plants-and-all into the bags shown above. These bags allow air circulation to dry the plant material and seeds for future threshing. We will be saving the bean plants that remain and burn them for culinary ashes that we will use to process our corn into nixtamal, the precursor to posole (hominy) and masa (dough) for tamales and corn tortillas.We harvested plenty of seed corn to give out to the students for field day next year. This is the way we dry the corn, turning it over and mixing it up for even drying every now and then. You can also see the seed heads of the black sorghum we harvested. This year we just wanted to see how it grows hear and expand the seed stock, now we have something to work with!