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Reflections: Nothing defines July in northern Illinois like all those fields of corn · Kendall County News - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Reflections. Nothing defines July in northern Illinois like all those
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  Speaker 1: fields of corn. Written by Roger Mattel for Shaw Local
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  Speaker 1: News Network, this article is being read by an automated
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  Speaker 1: voice brought to you by Everlett. The old saw was
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  Speaker 1: that corn should be knee high by the fourth of July,
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  Speaker 1: but that really hasn't been the case for well over
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  Speaker 1: a century now. As Kendall County Record editor Hugh R.
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  Speaker 1: Marshall observed in July nineteen eleven, never has the general
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  Speaker 1: crop outlook been so good as this year. Corn is
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  Speaker 1: from a week to two weeks ahead of any previous season.
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  Speaker 1: The old saying of knee high by the fourth is
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  Speaker 1: a back number. Most of the corn in the county
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  Speaker 1: is about shoulder high, and much of it tasseling out,
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  Speaker 1: So now it's a lot more accurate if we adopt
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  Speaker 1: Rogers and Hammerstein's measurement from Oklahoma. The corn is as
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  Speaker 1: high as an elephant's eye, and it looks like it's
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  Speaker 1: climbing clear up to the sky. There's a lot of
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  Speaker 1: debate about when or exactly where corn was first developed,
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  Speaker 1: but there seems little doubt that it was developed on
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  Speaker 1: purpose and didn't just happen. While plant biologists argue fiercely
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  Speaker 1: over corn's origins, it seems safe to say it arose
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  Speaker 1: somewhere in Central America, possibly in an accidental cross, but
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  Speaker 1: more likely by intentional genetic engineering by some brilliant Native
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  Speaker 1: American agronomists that resulted in adding the familiar rows of
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  Speaker 1: kernels and central cob to an existing grass that created
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  Speaker 1: the crop that, if it didn't make America, has certainly
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  Speaker 1: made Illinois. It actually took quite a while for corn
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  Speaker 1: to make its way north from Mexico. In the meantime,
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  Speaker 1: Illinois native people were already involved in crop genetics, selectively
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  Speaker 1: breeding such nutritious wild plants as sunflowers, giant ragweed, lambs,
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  Speaker 1: quarter pigweed, wild oats, and rice, and marsh elder also
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  Speaker 1: called sumpweed. Archaeologists figured this out as they were finding
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  Speaker 1: the seeds from these wild plants in ancient indigenous village
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  Speaker 1: sites that were far larger than their modern descendants. After
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  Speaker 1: the arrival of far more nutritious corn between about nine
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty and one thousand CE, those formerly cultivated
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  Speaker 1: plants were abandoned and reverted to the wild state we
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  Speaker 1: find them in today. The nutritious corn that replaced those
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  Speaker 1: other grains, combined with the beans and squash they were
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  Speaker 1: already growing, were dubbed the Three Sisters by native people.
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  Speaker 1: Handily enough, the three provided complementary amino acids for a
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  Speaker 1: complete vegetable protein diet. According to John C. Hudson in
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  Speaker 1: Making the Corn Belt, without getting too technical, four major
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  Speaker 1: corn varieties were developed by those clever native people, popcorn,
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  Speaker 1: sweet corn, flints, and dents. We all know about. Popcorn
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  Speaker 1: and sweet corn. Flints feature smooth, small, hard, usually light
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  Speaker 1: colored kernels and are fairly drought resistant, although generally less
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  Speaker 1: productive than comparable dents. Dents were named for the characteristic
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  Speaker 1: dent that forms in the top of each large ripe
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  Speaker 1: yellow colonel. More productive than flint's. Dents were also less
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  Speaker 1: resistant to drought and other weather conditions. So, as the
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  Speaker 1: kids say these days, it didn't take a rocket scientist
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  Speaker 1: to figure out that crossbreeding flints and dents would produce
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  Speaker 1: a superior strain. And out here on the Illinois Prairie,
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  Speaker 1: the interest in cross breeding started as soon as settlers
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  Speaker 1: began arriving. Many agronomous credit Robert Reid with creating the
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  Speaker 1: first classic strain of corn belt dent after arriving in
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  Speaker 1: Illinois from Ohio back in eighteen forty six, but some
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  Speaker 1: Prairie state farmers were producing their own dent crosses at
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  Speaker 1: least as early as eighteen thirty nine. In January eighteen
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  Speaker 1: thirty nine, James G. Soulard of Galina wrote a letter
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  Speaker 1: to Jesse Buell, editor of The Cultivator, a farm journal
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  Speaker 1: published in Albany, New York, touching on two main topics,
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  Speaker 1: the best strains of wheat to grow in northern Illinois
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  Speaker 1: and his efforts at cross breeding flints and dents to
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  Speaker 1: create new strains. We believe yellow corn is general more
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  Speaker 1: rich in nutritious matter, and the meal from it more
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  Speaker 1: grateful to northern palets than the meal from white varieties,
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  Speaker 1: he explained. He also noted he was having success in
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  Speaker 1: creating a flint strain with larger kernels and smaller cobs
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  Speaker 1: than the usual flints, which had small kernels and large cobs,
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  Speaker 1: But when it came to wheat, Soulard expressed frustration at
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  Speaker 1: his inability to identify the various strains that were available
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  Speaker 1: on the Illinois frontier so as to determine which might
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  Speaker 1: be worth growing and cross breeding. Then, in March of
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  Speaker 1: that same year, Lewis Ellsworth, who became one of Naperville's
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  Speaker 1: most prominent citizens, also wrote to the Cultivator about his
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  Speaker 1: frustrating efforts to find a suitable strain of wheat to grow.
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  Speaker 1: Ellsworth was also unimpressed with the farming techniques of his
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  Speaker 1: neighbors around Naperville. I should judge that the system of
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  Speaker 1: farming in this country was bad, he complained, Before plowing,
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  Speaker 1: they will burn off the stubble and all other matter
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  Speaker 1: which will burn their straw. Instead of converting it into manure,
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  Speaker 1: they pile it up and burn to get it out
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  Speaker 1: of the way. Thus and land is left without support
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  Speaker 1: except from the ashes made from the burning stubble and grass,
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  Speaker 1: which does not amount to much in my opinion. The
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  Speaker 1: wheat growing problem would be a conundrum for Illinois farmers
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  Speaker 1: for the next two decades until they finally came to
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  Speaker 1: terms with the fact that Illinois simply isn't wheat country.
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  Speaker 1: The soils are too rich, the climate too wet, and
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  Speaker 1: the winter's too cold and variable. And to this day,
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  Speaker 1: Illinois wheat grows best in the relatively poor soils of
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  Speaker 1: former heavy forests in extreme southwest Illinois. While you might
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  Speaker 1: see a few isolated wheat fields here in northern Illinois,
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  Speaker 1: major production has moved west to the wheat belt of
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  Speaker 1: the Great Plain States. It's fascinating that those indigenous farmers
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  Speaker 1: who tilled the soil in our neighborhood more than one
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  Speaker 1: thousand years ago pioneered crops that are, in many ways
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  Speaker 1: still staples of Illinois agriculture. Remember, their dependence was on
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  Speaker 1: the Three sisters corn, beans, and squash, and today Illinois
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  Speaker 1: is the nation's number two corn producer, bested only by Iowa,
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  Speaker 1: but is far and away the nation's number one soybean
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  Speaker 1: and pumpkin producer. Granted, soybeans aren't quite the same beans
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  Speaker 1: farmers in the Fox Valley we're shipping down river to
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  Speaker 1: Kahokia in twelve hundred, Nor are today's pumpkins exactly the
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  Speaker 1: same strain of squash they relied on. But still you
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  Speaker 1: have to admit it really is interesting farmers are still
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  Speaker 1: producing the Three sisters. Looking for more local history, visit
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  Speaker 1: Looking for more local history, visit