This post is actually a few weeks late. I finished harvesting the Bear Island Flint back in the third week of August, and now am well into the other flour corns, but I had a spare moment (there have not been many of those) so wanted to get the pics of it posted.
Bear Island Flint corn was the first of the short season corns I really worked with. I selected it over a couple of years and had a consistent 55 day to maturity, nicely formed, cob. And then I lost it.
The way I lost it was a bit difficult. I had 16 pound of selected seed, being best cobs, shortest maturity dates, set high enough off the ground to not be wiped out by mice. Friend was going to do a full acre with it, but when he went to plant it he found his seeder was broken, so he put the seed into a burlap sack in his barn.
A week later he had his seeder fixed, and went to get the seed, only to find that the burlap sack had been eaten into, and emptied, in that short time. The years I had spent selecting it out were gone. Oh well. Just how things work out. That was 2008. I figured the seed I still had, which was not selected seed, I better get into the ground and work at selecting it again.
Ears that mature late, or did not form well enough, or were too low and had gnawing from rodents, do not make the future seed cut, while the best was braided into lengths to hide in the protection of my house, away from the field mice, and maybe I will work on it again next year. I selected about 30 cobs from 800 plants. More reds than I previously remember. Ben helped me pick, and pulled the husks off of the rejects which simply are in flats to dry down until ready to be shelled and packed away to grind later into corn meal.
