Beautiful colors, Steve. For years, I've grown a mix of different colored sorghums, and then dry and bundle them up to hang on the walls for that artsy harvest look. Put a big, 6 foot long bundle on the wall by the front door.

Then last winter, the small birds that over-winter in my clematis vines discovered that Hey! These things are edible!!! Yo, gang, check this out!!!

Everytime I opened the door, a couple dozen birds flew off. The porch was covered in seed and bird droppings.

Oh well.

I've wondered how I get away with hanging different things under the carport roof, David.

They are only there for a week or less but millet, oats, wheat have all hung there without bird damage. The millet may be harvested a little too soon for them here at home. In the garden, I have only a few days to get every stem out! The first year I grew millet, it seemed to vanish before my eyes! The house finches came for it and must have driven off in cargo vans.

This corn was attacked by the raccoons. It stands in the garden so long, I may set myself up for more sweet corn damage because the flour corn is kind of a back up if there aren't any ears of sweet corn. I don't know tho', they didn't seem to like it very well. It must have been kind of a serendipitous raccoon experience to learn that the neighbor had expanded his corn plantings this year.

Steve

Awesome colors in Painted Mountain corn! Do you grind it into flour?

Seems to have an interesting history according to http://uprisingorganics.com "Christiansen set out to develop a more rugged, early maturing mountain corn to grow in his Montana conditions. Starting from an initial cross of close to 70 native dry corns (some now extinct), the variety has been selected upon for nearly 40 years and pushed to the limit of what corn can withstand."

Greg, I used Albers regular cornbread recipe when I made it a couple of years ago but I don't have a mill. What I did differently:

The seed was soaked, I measured it as whole kernels and decided to use 1 1/2 cups of corn and call that 1 cup of corn meal no matter what it amounted to after soaking and processing. Processing was in my food processor.

I sifted the wet meal thru a screen and ran the heavy stuff back thru the food processor, then sifted it again and discarded about 2 tablespoons.

Then, canned evaporated milk was used instead of regular milk, 1:1. If I remember right, corn bread is more wheat flour than corn flour. I might try milling wheat by soaking it and running it thru the food processor - well, maybe not.

It worked great even if it was a little coarse. It also tasted wonderful! I'm looking forward to having that pan of cornbread soon!

Steve