Reclaiming Corn:

“On our homestead, we have discovered flour corn to be easy to grow, harvest and process into nutrient-dense foods that taste good and meet our needs for self-sufficiency.”

— Peace of Earth Farmstead

My mother was visiting us when I proudly plucked the first cob of flour corn from our 3 sisters garden, excitedly I peeled back the husk to reveal the dry, white kernels, and my mother exclaimed, “we can’t eat that!”  Like most modern Americans, she had no experience of homegrown corn as a staple grain. Today in the US, corn means roadside sweet corn or highly processed, genetically-modified, glyphosate-tainted substances such as corn syrup, corn oil and corn starch or rows of field corn for livestock. Actually, corn is America’s grain… we’ve just forgotten her.  Zea Mays, the botanical name for corn, is a plant uniquely adapted to the North and South American continents. She is, however, a scientific mystery, as she is the only plant that cannot reproduce in the wild. Corn has co-evolved with humans and is dependent on human interaction to save and plant her seeds for future generations. Botanists continually bump up against another corn mystery- where did this plant come from? For a long time, this question went unanswered; however, recently they have hypothesized that corn evolved from an ancient wild grass, Teosinte, growing in southern Mexico. Many indigenous creation stories tell of corn being divinely gifted to humans in various ways. Whether evolution or creation, the time has come to reclaim this forgotten gift to humanity.  On our homestead, we have discovered flour corn to be easy to grow, harvest and process into nutrient-dense foods that taste good and meet our needs for self-sufficiency.

I have, surprisingly, fallen in love with corn. I say surprisingly, because although I have grown food all my life, I never really got into growing corn. The modern industrialization and demoralization of corn had left a distaste in my heart for this plant that felt irrevocably tainted by Big Ag and I wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, I was told that even if I tried to grow corn, it would probably be contaminated by the GMO field crops miles away (which is not necessarily true, more on that later.) But after trying other grain crops including wheat, oats, sorghum, buckwheat and rice, we could see this grain path spiraling us away from the homestead models that we are aligned with, and leading toward what modern agriculture had figured out a long time ago- cereal grains require a level of inputs, energy and resources that are not aligned with the simple life most homesteaders are seeking—it simply isn’t sustainable.

Inspired by a visit to a Hopi Village and reading of Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, I was ready to try corn as a grain, but would we like the taste of it? I have always preferred flour tortillas over the hard, gritty corn tortillas I had only ever experienced. But my husband convinced me that just like everything else we had ever grown, corn we grew ourselves would undoubtedly taste better.  Feeling a tug from somewhere deep inside my bones, my own native ancestry leading the way, I was then guided to The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman, where we learned all about Nixtamalization, the ancient process of cooking corn in hardwood ashes in order to remove their hulls, bring out a richer flavor, allow the corn to form into a cohesive dough and enhance the bioavailability of the nutrients. That was the missing puzzle piece we needed and so our journey toward reclaiming corn as America’s grain solution began.

Easy to Grow, Harvest and Store

With roots in the ancient Mayan, Aztec and Inca cultures, grain corn, also called flour corn, dent corn or maize, was the subsistence for all peoples of the Americas for over 12,000 years.  Before colonization there was 5-7 times the variety of corn than we have available today.  Archaeological evidence of corn grain was found in ancient Brazil, the farthest south from her Mexican origins, was brought northward by the Hopi, Navajo and Iroquois people, and has been grown as far north as the First Nations in Canada since at least 500 AD. Corn has been adapted to grow in North America and has been easily grown by the people of this land for millenia.  I find deep pleasure in growing corn – walking through cool, shady rows, her arms reach out and gently caress my shoulder, breathing deep, the sweet, floral scent of the pollen - it is food for my soul! American Indian corn expert, Carl L Barnes has said, “There are three types of poverty: physical, mental and spiritual. When you turn to the soil and raise corn, all of these poverties disappear.” We have found corn to be a source of abundance for us as well.

Corn grain typically matures in a 90-100 day growing period, which makes it accessible for all US growing zones to plant and harvest within their growing season (no indoor seed sowing needed.) The seeds of open-pollinated, heirloom varieties are easy to save requiring no additional purchases year after year. And by saving the seeds from your own crops, you develop a variety well adapted to your unique eco-system. There is no need to worry about GMO field corn contaminating your crop by wind pollination unless there is a field within 1 mile of your garden. In that case, I would plant a fast-growing wind barrier hedge on the side of your garden where the prevailing wind enters, and perhaps choose not to save seed from the rows closest to that side. Since each kernel of corn is pollinated individually (each silk thread corresponds with one corn kernel and needs to be pollinated in order for that kernel to develop), you should be able to see if there has been cross-pollination from another crop — those kernels will have different traits than the rest of your crop — and you would simply discard those kernels.

Compared to other types of grain, we have found corn easy to store. Once you have removed the kernels from the cob and laid them out to completely dry, flour corn seeds can last 5-10 years or longer in cool, dry storage (cooler temperatures and low humidity will prolong their viability.) Many Native American tribes strive to always have 4 years’ worth of seed on hand at any time so that there is always plenty and enough to share.  Remarkably easy to harvest, corn requires no threshing, winnowing, or machines. They can be easily plucked from their cobs with a thumb, or by rubbing two cobs together. You can also find a simple, inexpensive Hand Corn Sheller (such as the one linked here) to help with this task.

Today, 90% of the corn in the US is grown from genetically modified seeds and 94% of our seed diversity has completely disappeared.   Thankfully, not everyone has forgotten corn’s amazing nourishing capacity. Mexico has 59 varieties of indigenous corn, Peru has 55, and in Argentina, 52 native varieties still exist; in comparison to the 10 varieties in the United States.  You’ll want to start with an heirloom, open pollinated variety of flour, dent or flint corn that is suited to your growing climate such as, Cherokee White Flour Corn, Hopi Blue Corn, Seneca Red, Cherokee Eagle Corn, Saskatoon White as well as others.  You can find these heirloom seeds from sources such as Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Adaptive Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Seed Savers Exchange. By growing and keeping these unique heirloom varieties of corn, we support small family farmers and help to preserve diversity for our endemic American grain.

Nutrient-dense and Easy to Process

Modern commercially grown corn products are degermed to lengthen their shelf life, this process removes the flavor and nutrition. This type of ground corn is not properly processed for human consumption, and in fact, eating a diet of non-nixtamalized cornmeal leads to a dietary insufficiency illness called pellagra.  Some groups of people who came to the New World and saw native peoples growing and consuming corn, adopted this food without realizing the importance in the indigenous way of processing the corn to unlock the nutrition within making it bio-available for our bodies.

Nixtamalized corn flour (called masa harina in Mexican cuisine) is higher in nutritious fat than any other flour. In fact, you do not need to add any fat when cooking it. Our tortilla recipe consists of nixtamalized corn, salt and water and does not require any oil on the griddle when cooking. The nixtamalization process unlocks the bio-availability of several B vitamins like niacin, folate, thiamin as well as calcium, iron and zinc.  It is also higher than wheat flour in fiber, calcium, potassium and antioxidants like carotenoids (in yellow and red varieties) and anthocyanins (in blue and purple varieties.) Whereas one cob of hybridized sweet corn has more sugar than a snickers bar, nixtamalized flour corn contains very low amount of sugar and in fact, has a lower glycemic index when compared to other flours. Consuming home-grown, nixtamalized corn grain… “may help reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancer. The antioxidants and minerals present in masa harina can help protect against oxidative stress and inflammation, which are associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases.” (numberanalytics.com)

Nixtamalization sounds complicated, but is a simple process using tools that you probably already have on your homestead – a large stock pot, water, sifted hardwood ash, and a colander or basket. It is fun to watch the dry corn kernels turn a brilliant orange color as they interact in the pot of water and ash- you know it’s doing it’s job! After the corn has cooked in the ash water, it goes through a couple washes, which rinses the ash away as you rub the corn against the sides of a colander; then returning to the pot to cook in plain water and washing/rubbing the corn against the colander again to help remove the thin skin. That’s it… now you have hominy which can be added directly into soups or casseroles, ground into masa dough for tortillas, or canned for later use. You can see the full process in action at PeaceofEarthFarmstead.com/reclaiming-corn

Tastes Good

The resulting product, nixtamalized corn, is much tastier than commercially processed cornmeal and grits. Corn continues to be an essential staple food across Latin America, evidenced by the impressive diverse cuisines such as Arepas in the streets of Venezuela, Pozole Mexican soup, and Central American staple, Pupusas; not to mention more commonly known corn tortillas and tamales. Tortillas made from the nixtamalized corn are soft, pliable, and flavorful. We also love to make corn griddlecakes, topped with blueberry-maple syrup, you will not miss boring ‘ole wheat flour pancakes! We have a shelf full of canned hominy to use in a three-sisters soup or cheesy sweet potato hominy casserole.  We have even made pozol- a corn-cocoa beverage that gives regular hot cocoa a run for its money.

I hope that you feel inspired to incorporate this authentically American food into your diet. Feel free to try recipes using a purchased masa harina flour. Of course, your homegrown and nixtamalized corn will taste even better!  My greater hope is that American homesteaders learn to love and revere corn once again as an easy, nutritious, and delicious self-sufficient grain solution.

This is an excerpt from Catherine’s book on Reclaiming Corn-a comprehensive manual on growing, harvesting, processing and cooking with flour corn-which is expected to be available in 2026.

Copyright 2025 Catherine Lightfoot, PeaceofEarthFarmstead.com Do not copy or use in any way without express permission.