It is no Longer in the Milk

I harvested four more ears of corn today (I guess I'm in my harvest dress again). I braided them and hung them to dry in my studio. I've been waiting until the husks lose their color and become yellow before I harvest.
Tony, the heirloom farmer who donated the Lenape seeds (for the Canarsie garden), explained: "After the milk stage (like sweet corn when it is picked) it then goes into the "dough" stage where it thickens but is not hard. Once you are into the latter part of the dough stage but has not dried yet, it is mature enough to harvest. I try to wait until husks yellow before harvesting"

I've come across a book online about Iroquois uses for maize. Here is an English translation of the process from the Seneca language:

Corn
She plants
It is just forming sprouts
It has sprouted
The blade begins to appear
The blade has appeared
The blade is already out
The stalk begins to appear
The stalk is fully out
It is beginning to silk
The ears are out
It has silked out
The tassels are fully out
It is in the milk
It is no longer in the milk
The ears are beginning to set
The kernels are setting on the cob
They are husking (indefinite as
to method)
She is braiding
It is braided
It is hung over a pole
It is strung along a pole

Canarsie Squash Flower

A picture of a squash flower by Abby Savitch-Lew. She's helping me with the Canarsie garden this month. Today I was on Governor's Island checking out my new studio space for an artist residency there that will go on through December.

My Favorite Garden in Brooklyn

The Three Sisters are all over this beautiful spot. I love this sprawling community garden. West 22nd and the Coney Island boardwalk. Fantastic -- with roosters too! Look how tall that corn is! It's twice as tall as me!

First Harvest, Smith & Bergen

I noticed today at the patch that a couple of the ears had turned yellow. So it seemed like a good time to harvest them. They are now hanging to dry in my studio. From now on it's a waiting game between me and the squirrels...

I propose a Kings Highway Heritage Bike Path

(the picture above Cortelyou & Schenectady)
Usually, to get to Canarsie, I take Bedford Avenue to Clarendon. This route roughly follows parallel to the the old Indian pathways that ran along what is now Flatbush and Cortelyou. Today at Bedford and Cortelyou I decided to ride down Cortelyou (which doesn't have a bike lane. Clarendon does). Cortelyou was once called Canarsie Road -- and the route it follows was the Indian pathway to the planting lands in Canarsie. What a nice ride. A quiet road (even has speed bumps). It's a road until Schenectady where it becomes a little lane / driveway. This got me thinking. How great would it be if the DOT laid down bike lanes on roads or sections of roads that were once Indian pathways? Why not? And they could even paint these lanes in a different color from the green lanes. They could become our heritage bike paths.
Many of our main roads were once Indian pathways: Fulton, Court, Atlantic, Kings Highway, Flatbush, 4th/3rd Avenues. I propose they start with Kings Highway. It runs east - west across the belly of the borough. The Indians called this path Mechawanienck "the ancient pathway". The settlers widened it into a carriage road an renamed it King's Highway in 1704. On the NYC Cycling map much of Kings Highway is designated "planned/proposed route" so it seems a logical step to lay down a heritage bike lane. They could eventually come up with a system of bike lanes that followed the old paths. These heritage bike lanes would make roads safer for bikes and pedestrians. The historical component would enrich the experience of moving around the borough and has the potential help us connect us more deeply to this place.

Hey what's going on here?

Rode by the plot at 11am on my way to an appointment. Wonder when this occurred? A bunch of dirt dug out of the plot from around a sunflower and the sunflower top missing from its stem. Looks like the work of an animal. If not an animal then that's kind of disturbing. Still if it is an animal it's a little worrying. I know squirrels will go for the corn but at the same time the ears should mature on the stalks. Birds like sunflower seeds and the tops of my sunflowers at home have been getting their heads snipped off. But the digging around the base and throwing dirt doesn't seem bird like, does it? Weird.

Fences

I was on my way to get a coffee when I ran into a guy I know who said he saw me quoted in New York Magazine saying that I was surprised the corn hasn’t been vandalized yet. I wonder where they got that quote because I never spoke to anyone at New York Magazine. However, I will admit that it's true I’m pleasantly surprised that the worst thing I’ve found at the plot is a half eaten dominos pizza tossed in among the stalks. Last winter a blogger posted a story about this project and promptly received several negative comments including the ominous threat: “I’m going to let my dog pee on it”.
In Canarsie the garden is actually surrounded by a fence. Fences figure into the colonial history of the area. One translation of Canarsee is actually “the fenced place” And according to the book, The Algonquin Series, Vol 2 (Tooker) – European farmers as early as 1624 started leasing land in the area from the Indians until there were “twelve to twenty cultivated portions all enclosed in fence.” And the 1665 land grant states “a fence shall set at Canarissen for the protection of the Indian cultivation.” Fences were tools of the colonists in the sectioning land into parcels that could be bought and sold and owned. However the Indian concept of land ownership was different from that of the Europeans. An good book on this topic is Changes in the Land: Indians, Colononists, and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon.
There have been a lot of surprises during this project besides what has or has not been vandalized. I hadn’t counted on stray cats in Canarsie or a summer without rain. And I wonder why the beans and squash are flourishing in Canarsie while they are struggling in Boerum Hill. I’m surprised that the Lenape blue flour corn so short and the Gigi Hill blue flint corn is taller than last year.
But the lack of “vandalism” at the Boerum Hill plot keeps coming up. One person asked me recently how I keep people from taking the corn.
I don’t.