By Angie Maccarone

(905) 859-5174

St. Paul’s Presbyterian

Church

Our Prayer Group meets this evening (Wednesday) at 7:30 p.m.

St. Paul’s Community Youth Group will meet this Friday (Oct. 14) at the church for a Sports Night. Are you in Grades 7 to 12? Then come check us out. We would love to have you join us.

Parenthood — It’s a tough job. There’s no instruction manual, or so we think. God has plenty to say in the Bible about parenthood. The whole design was his to begin with. Being a responsible parent is the hardest task anyone can take on. Where can we turn for encouragement?

Join us this Sunday (Oct. 16) at 10 a.m. as Jeff continues his series on Parenthood with the message “Now What?”

This is also our Teacher Appreciation Sunday. Child care (for children two years of age and younger) is provided during the gathering and our regular KidzKonnection program for children in Grades 1 to 6 and children ages three to five takes place at the same time. Our new YouthKonnect program for those who are Youth Group age (Grades 7 to 12) takes place right after the gathering at 11:05 a.m.

Oct. 18, the Ladies Who Serve will be quilting at 9:30 a.m. They are always looking for extra helping hands, so please come join them.

For more information about any of our activities or events, please contact the church office or visit our Web site at www.stpaulsnobleton.ca

Horticulture

“Out in the field on a bright autumn morn, folks sing a song, song of the corn. Late in the day when secrets are sworn folks tell a tale, tale of the corn.” — adapted lyrics and music Power and Steven Nicholas.

Some historians and palaeobotanists (palaeo from the Greek “palaeo,” meaning prehistoric and “botane,” meaning plant) believe corn originated in the central Andes Mountain region of South America, home to potatoes, while others claim it developed from prehistoric wild grass, called teosinte, found in the Tehuacan (teewah can) Valley of Mexico, where corn-like ears dating to 2750 BC have been discovered. But it is now thought teosinte is itself an offshoot of the original corn plant. Pollen from a 25,000 to 80,000 year old corn-like plants has been discovered in a cave near Mexico City. Whether it originated in South America and spread north or in Mexico and spread north and south, botanists today say corn, the most widely grown crop in the Americas, was domesticated from a grass-like plant, now thought extinct, and this domestication may have begun in the Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico, where stone milling tools bearing corn residue have been found in a 8,700-year old layer of deposits. Remains of core ears more than 6,000-years-old have been found in the Guila Naquitz Cave in the nearby Oaxaca (wah-hawka) Valley.

As early as 1500 BC, the growing of corn had begun to spread far and wide, soon becoming a staple food in Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America), the Caribbean and Andean South America. By 1100 BC, the plant had undergone great changes, according to remains of ears found in Mexican caves dating to that time. This is due to natural hybridization and that in which humans had a hand.

From its earliest domestication, corn had a religious significance for its ancient growers. An ancient tale, well known to the First Nations of the American Southwest, tells that native people lived in four worlds. Since their ancestors first appeared on the planet with the present day the fourth and each of the other worlds were buried under the succeeding one.

According to this tale, corn was present in the first world when the first humans appeared. This plant was likened to a mother and soon became second only to Mother Earth in importance. As time past, tradition required that Corn Mother, in the form of a perfect ear of corn with its tip ending in four perfect kernels, be placed beside each newborn child for 20 days. Corn Mother was present for the naming of the baby and would remain the child’s spiritual mother for life. This religious side of corn is reflected in its botanical name zea (Latinized Greek for cause of life), mays (Latin for our mother). Some Andean cultures, such as the Moche people, made sacred pottery shaped and painted to look like of ears of corn to persuade their gods to grant a good crop while the Aztecs in ancient Mexico prayed to their corn god Centeotl for the same reason.

Of course there was a lighter side to this annual and many a little Indian girl and later a little pioneer girl had a treasured corn husk doll. Corn cobs were once hollowed out and used as pipes. Up until the First World War, when corn was hand harvested, families from neighbouring farms would gather together with the men and older boys and girls helping harvest the crop and the women and younger children holding corn shucking or husking bees. It was a time not only for working, but for neighbours to socialize, share good food and on the last day enjoy square dancing in the evening. Guessing how many kernels there are in a container is still is a game at many country fairs. Today, corn roasts are popular and corn mazes are created in many rural communities as tourist attractions. In some children’s play centres, dried corn kernels are used instead of sand in play boxes. At this time of year, corn stalks and multicoloured ears called fint corn are popular for Thanksgiving, Halloween and general fall decorations.

“Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard. Heap high the golden corn. No richer gift has Autumn poured from out her lavish horn” (from a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier).

Long before the discovery of the Americas by the Vikings and then Columbus, First Nations’ people had successfully hybridized corn with the results that several new varieties were developed, some now hardy enough to grow in the cooler Andes region and in the cooler areas of the north eastern U.S.A. and southeastern Canada. Certainly the Six Nations Confederacy in upper New York state and the closely related Wyandots here in south central Ontario about an hour’s drive north of King Township were growing corn some 800 years ago and saw it as a gift from the Great Spirit (God), who they called Gitchi Manitou, which provided them with a generally reliable source of food and item of trade allowing them to settle in villages and live a more sedentary life than their hunter-gatherer, nomadic ancestors although they continued to hunt and fish.

The First Nations farmers in Wendake and northern New York grew corn by heaping soil into a small mound over at least one dead fish and then planting three to five dried kernel seeds in each mound. Beans which used the faster growing corn stalks for support and squash whose large leaves helped conserve the ground moisture and discourage weeds including the infamous ragweed were often planted in the mounds as well. This was known as a three-sisters planting. These farmers gladly shared their corn growing expertise with the early Dutch, French and British settlers. The Six Nations people called corn papoon.

“I’m as corny as Kansas in August, High as a flag on the Fourth of July” (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific).

For nearly 250 years after English colonists founded Jamestown in Virginia in 1607 and French colonists founded Quebec City, corn remained the staple crop grown by pioneer farmers in the U.S.A. and Canada. Today, corn is still the U.S.’s most important crop, although it was briefly surpassed by soybeans in 1979. The midwestern states such as Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa produce most American corn, much of which is now genetically engineered. Now China is the world’s leading corn producer.

“We’re from Iowa, Iowa, that’s were the tall corn grows” (from the state’s official Corn Song, lyrics by Ray W. Lockard and George Hamilton, music by Edward Riley).

Corn grown for fodder and chemical uses is taller (more than eight feet) than that grown for human consumption, which is usually about a foot shorter.

Nature has provided this plant with two unique ways to ensure high productivity, in that it has a large leaf area and a modified photosynthesis condition known as C4, that allows it to survive drought by making it extremely efficient in exchanging water vapour for airborne carbon dioxide.

As the plant begins to mature, pollen from the male tassel is wind carried to the fertilize female flower silk like strands of hair. Each hair will create one kernel and ear of corn will have from two hundred to four hundred kernels.

There are three main types of corn grown world wide. Firstly, forage corn, where stalks and ears are chopped up by a machine called a harvester and then stored in silos to feed domestic animals, especially during winter. Secondly, grain corn zea mays amylacea (Latin for starchy), which is still to be seen in fields throughout King where it’s being left to mature until its kernels are at their largest and dried out, having extracted all the goodness out of the cobs. When this, by far the biggest of all corn crops, is harvested in late fall or even next spring, machines called combines are used and only the ears are picked, their hard kernels stripped off and collected in onboard bins while the cobs and husks are spit out on the fields as some of next season's natural fertilizer. The kernels are shipped to a facility where they are ground up to be used for cornmeal, as food for farm and zoo animals, as well as pets. They are also used to make cornmeal flour, cornstarch corn cereals cooking oil and corn syrup for people. Grain corn, now being used to make the bio-fuel ethano, is found in such diverse items as a replacement for phosphates in cleaning products, an absorbent material in diapers and foot powder and as an ingredient in the manufacture of nylon and plastics. Thirdly comes sweet, corn zea mays saccharata (Latin for sugary), grown to be eaten fresh, frozen or as a canned vegetable by humans.

The idea of popcorn didn’t just happen in time to become snack to enjoy at CNE or at the movies, as evidence of popcorn has turned up in 4,000-year-old archaeological sites in the American southwest and many a 19th century Christmas tree was decorated with strings of plain or coloured popcorn.

“There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn is as high as an elephant's eye, And it looks like it’s climbin’ clear up to the sky. Oh what a beautiful mornin’, oh what a beautiful day” (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma).

To get corn to grow this well, proper fertilization must be applied early in the growing season as the final quality and quantity of the leaves and ears depends on keeping a good supply of nutrients available to each plant as it grows. Corn as high as the average farmer’s knee by July 4 was a sign to farmers in Oklahoma and other American corn belt states that there would be a good healthy crop that year, barring For sweet corn in the home vegetable garden, composted cattle manure is the best natural fertilizer to use, but neither it nor rotting fish will deter the determined raccoons.

Corn also needs adequate rainfall as well, but too much, especially in the spring, will cause it to rot. Most importantly, it needs a good stretch of very warm sunny weather which are reasons it isn’t much grown in the British Isles even though modern hybrids can now more readily adapt to regional growing conditions and a variety of soils.

“Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care! Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care! Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care! My master’s gone away.”

Making corn whiskey has long been popular in the American south and its abundant availability there is reflected in this traditional African American folk song, referring to slaves cracking open a jug of this brew after their unpopular master’s funeral.

Travellers to and from the Americas soon introduced corn to Europe, from where its cultivation spread to Asia, Australia and Africa. It became a popular staple food for southern Africans, who call it mielie or mealie when it is ground.

Corn is Canada’s third most important grain crop, after wheat and barley. It is grown in all provinces, but Ontario is the leading producer accounting for 70 per cent of the national yield.

By the by, corn which came into English through old German from the Latin granum is the collective name in Britain for all grain. Thus the corn told about in the English translation of the Bible including the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh’s dreams and the story of Ruth and Boaz means grain probably emmer or spelt ancient varieties of wheat and the Corn Laws of British history also refers to all grain. What we here call corn was given the name Indian corn by early British settlers who recognized it as another type of grain which of course it is but only in English speaking North America and Ausrtralia does the word corn mean just corn on the cob. Maize, the name this grain, which like all grains a distant cousin of grasses including bamboo whose stalk it resembles, is based on the Spanish settlers' pronunciation of the Taino, a Caribbean First Nation, word for corn mahiz and from that came the botanical late Latin name mays.

By the by horticulturalists have created ornamental corn with some plants having varigated or coloured leaves. One cultivar can grow more than 15 feet high with inedible ears up to one foot long.

Now as I’m driving through King and New Tecumseth Townships past fields of corn I’ll surely be reminded of this grain's long history and its importance to the culture we share with the rest of the Americas. I hope you will be too.

Nobleton Senior Activities

Our afternoon euchre was attended by only a few members, hoever, we still had a fun game.

The winners were Lou Curtis, Cathy Kiekebelt, Roy Hilliard and Glenn Atchinson.

A large number of members showed up for our evening Bid euchre. The winners were Sandy Tower, Iva Hilliard, Reta Borg, Chuck Hansford and Lou Curtis.

The next afternoon and evening bid euchre will be Oct. 18. Everyone is welcome. Come and enjoy.