GRINDING CORN- The Old Fashioned Way- So You Have Corn Year Round.

i'm going to show you two different ways that you can grind your grain corn and i'm also going to tell you certain kinds of corn that you might want to grow in order to preserve it through the winter hey everybody chad cruiser here with health and homestead and the hopi from the southwestern portion of the united states one of the things that they would suggest historically is that you would always save two years worth of seed for your corn and that makes perfect sense especially with the last video if you haven't seen our last video on corn one of the most important crops to grow if you're looking to be self-sustaining one of the things we talked about is the fact that corn is one of the highest yielding plants you could possibly grow so if you're looking to get as much as you can in the smallest place possible specifically calories and calories are extremely important if you're looking to be as self-sufficient as possible that corn is one of the best crops that you can grow and so specifically if you're looking to save your corn obviously you know sweet corn as we said is fantastically tasty but in the end you're not going to be able to have that most of the winter so growing some kind of of grain corn you can either do popcorn or you can do a flint corn and you can grind that and you can end up using it for cornbread johnny cakes polenta various different things and so another aspect of growing your own corn is that the most common corns if you're looking in the typical gardening magazines you're going to find the vast majority is going to be what we call hybrid corn now that's fine you'll get really high yield and the reality is the 15 million calories per acre is probably from hybrid corn so if you're not using hybrid corn you're really probably not going to get get 15 million calories per acre but using a non-hybrid corn which is what we call an open pollinated corn that is a standard corn that you plant it this year and next year it's going to be the same kind of corn unless you add cross pollination from somebody else's field but open pollinated seeds are seeds that are they grow what we call true to type that means that simply if you plant this specific kind of corn you should get the very same kind the next year other than cross pollination so one of the things i want to do is i want to actually show you how the process of hybridization works so that you understand because to most people it's just kind of this nebulous idea what's a hybrid what's an open pollinated if you haven't seen my video on that you're going to want to go back and watch what is the difference between open pollinated hybrid and what people typically call heirlooms we look at that i go into detail about that but i'm going to show you real quick what it's like how to make a hybrid so what you end up doing is you go to a stalk of corn and right here you can see this part of the corn this is called the tassel this has the male part of the plant and so the pollen is on this and if you actually shake it sometimes you can actually see the pollen falling off and if you take one of those pieces of just one of those tiny you could call it maybe a branch there but if you take one of those portions of the plant off one of those tassels and you go down to what is called the silk and right here you can see the silk and if you actually rub it on there or shake it right above it the little tiny pieces of pollen much of it you probably can't even see will be sprinkling on the female portion of the plant they will be sprinkling on the silk and you can the reason it's called silk if you can't tell just by looking at it is that it actually feels and looks like silk it feels just like it and so as you put the pollen from the male portion of the plant onto the female portion of the plant that's the standard way that your crop will be pollinating itself or pollinating the corn around it now if it pollinates itself that would be what we would call an open pollinated variety or if it pollinates the one next to it but let's say you have two totally different kinds of corn so you have one particular variety and another particular variety and you take from one the tassel so you take the pollen from one variety of plant you bring it over to another variety of corn totally different variety of corn and you actually take that tassel and you pollinate the silk you will end up having a third kind of corn that would be called a hybrid the next generation will have what's called hybrid vigor it will grow stronger have less disease and it will have a fantastic yield often often i'll have a better yield than you would had before with an open pollen open pollinated variety and that's why so many people want to grow the hybrid forms the trouble is you're not 100 sure what you're going to get the next generation after that if you save the seed it's an open pollinated variety at least then you know what you're getting you're going to have typically a consistent yield if you have consistently good soil in the area that you're planting it so that gives you an idea but if you're going to try to save seed to be as self-sustaining as possible you'd want to be used using an open pollinated variety you can find some of those at places like rare rareseeds.org.com i think southern exposure seeds has some of these and so you can look around online and find these non-hybrids if you're looking to save your own seeds now i want to actually show you how we go about using you can if you grow some kind of grain corn not a sweet corn you can use something like this this right here is a grain mill that can process different things it could do maybe things like oats or wheat but it can also do corn and if you take a look at it here this one just happens to be by lehman's i'm not selling any products from them i have no connection to them i've been down there and kidron ohio visited and this was called the their lehman's best grain mill that they actually produce they actually had made for them or at least marketed under their name and it's a very simple process if you if you look at what it actually looks like you have these two different burrs and you can either get metal burrs or you could get stone burs now the stone birds are probably the more old-fashioned way the iron burs are probably going to be more hardy and last you longer and they're more versatile you can actually do different kinds of things with the metal ones that you may not be able to do with some of the stone burs and when you take it apart it's pretty simple to see when you open it up here you can see on the inside of it is actually how it works and you can see these the different burrs on the inside and how it crushes as it spins now it's very simple the process you simply take what is called the hopper and you take your corn and you you pour some of the corn into the hopper and it's not much more complex than just taking the handle and you start cranking and it's relatively it's not to eat right now it's pretty easy but there are times it's relatively difficult but you can see the the ground up corn coming out of the bottom there if you do one run through the mill you end up getting something like corn meal and if you literally take it again you can you can pour it back into the hopper and make another run through if you do it a second time through it'll be more like what you would think of as corn flour so that you might want to use that more likely for some other form of flour maybe bread or various things that you want it to be more fine but when you're making cornmeal it doesn't matter that it's a little has a little bit of grit to it obviously as you cook it it's going to soften down so that's basically the simple way of doing it and it is quite a process now this is the old-fashioned way of doing it and keep you in good shape and might actually add a little bit of strength to your arms there and so that is one simple way of doing or you can get obviously some of the meals you can hook up a you know it's actually a flywheel and you can hook up something to a motor actually to spin the thing that's an option or you can buy just motorized mills if you if you're using electricity and these kinds of things and we are by the way but the second option if you don't have anything else something that you might already have sitting around your house sitting around your kitchen might be one of these and this is a coffee grinder now i actually don't drink coffee but we do keep one of these around the house and that's because we like to grind flaxseed so you may have something like this sitting around and so you may look at that and think boy you can't grind very much at a time and that is true but i'll show you how it works it's pretty simple these are about as simple a gadget as you can get and so you just pour your corn into there and you can just grind it simply that way so in the way it works at least with this one and i think most of them is you just literally push down on them obviously looking at that you would not want to be doing massive quantities of grain that way but it is an option it's a small simple way that if you don't have another option there you have obviously you'd want more than this you'd do this a few different times and you'd be able to is it the best option not at all it's obviously not the best option it's just a something to get you through something that would work but corn is one of the best things you could possibly grow like we said because it gives you so many calories because it is relatively versatile whether the different things you can you can cook like we said whether it's johnny cakes polenta cornbread or just simply making cornmeal one of the simplest things you could do you could heat it up on your wood stove you could make it on your uh you know general stove that you have whether a gas or an electric stove my wife makes a fantastic flavored cornbread that that doesn't use any yeast it's a very simple recipe and i love this stuff it's very simple it's not obviously it's not going to without yeast it's not going to have the fluff that you would have in the standard you know one that you would use some form of rising agent but it has a fantastic flavor it's very simple and learning to make simple things is actually to me very nice it's something that i enjoy thoroughly and you just learn to eat food a little different way when you're trying to keep it as simple as possible and by the way if you like this video hit the subscribe button and the like button god bless and have a fantastic day

Channel: Health And Homestead

Views: 1,919

Rating: 4.9540229 out of 5

Keywords: Cornmeal, grinding cornmeal, cornmill, milling corn, corn mill, grain mill, how to mill wheat, how to mill corn?, how to make cornmeal, storage food, sustainability, vegan, vegetarian, homesteading, health, healthy, non-gmo, non gmo, hybrid corn, open pollinated

Id: sILdcaOUAbw

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020