The Grand Harvest

These were taken earlier in the season, but they demonstrate how high the corn reached.

 Grain amaranth with red flowers.

 Grain amaranth with green flowers.

 Amaranth alongside sunflowers.

 Female praying mantis after having reproduced and then devoured

her male counterpart!!

 Pole beans.

 Cut amaranth flowers.

Sept-Oct

Corn and beans.

Cacao shells for mulching.

Kakai pumpkins.

French-variety of pumpkin. 

Our corn during the flowering (tassel) stage. 

Huitlacoche (corn smut)

Sunflowers.

Ben and Dan harvesting corn smut.

                                                                     Amaranth

Trionfo Violetto Beans

Kakai pumpkin.

Corundas (tamales) made with masa from last

year's corn harvest, and wrapped in leaves from 

this year's corn.

Friends in the Trent community planted their sunflowers in our plot.

August

Our plots include different types of squash, like these 

pumpkin seedlings that were started indoors, and others

that were directly sown.

 Small amaranth plants.

 Maíz & frijoles. 

 This is what our wapsi corn looked like in July.

 Once the zucchini and other squash flowers began to 

appear, our land became abundant in all types of insect 

pollinators. They are interested in the pollen, while we 

are interested in harvesting the flowers to include them in 

our tasty quesadillas. 

The Hawks of the Trent Sports Camp come to visit Iván

biweekly to chat about edible gardens, sustainability, and 

chocolate production.

They even get to grind cacao at Champlain College

 using the bicycle grinder.

To tie in our research of successfully growing heirloom corn in a polyculture with gastronomy, we have introduced a Fresh Corn Tortilla project at the Peterborough Farmer's Market, which takes place on Saturday mornings at Morrow Park. Using local corn and a Slow Food mentality, we take two days before the market to prepare the masa (dough used for pressing tortillas): one day to boil it in a process called nixtamalización and the other day to bicycle grind it. The typical tortilla found in many a supermarket or restaurant cannot be prepared in this fashion because it requires mass scale production and a long shelf life, meaning lots of preservatives. 

We mentioned that the corn for tortillas can grow in a polyculture, as opposed to industrial monoculture systems, which means that there are other edibles growing alongside el maíz. Through the tortilla project, we aim at incorporating many of these vegetables found in milpa plots on the tortilla, including amaranth, chile peppers, tomatoes, onions, lamb's quarter, squash, zucchini flowers, and more.

 The beginning stages of the demonstration garden at Champlain College, Trent University.

The laborious task of preparing the land "a mano" (by hand).

Laura pedal-grinding the nixtamalized corn at Champlain College.

To see the bicycle-grinder in action visit the Peterborough Fair on August 13th (in the Agriculture Pavilion).

What is a milpa and why corn?

Today, corn production abounds throughout the world. It dominates landscapes in South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. It is a universal cereal grain that has found its way to environments of all sorts: from cold high altitudes to arid lowlands to tropical latitudes. Its consumption can also vary, including human intake, livestock feed, or ethanol production. Most production is carried out in monoculture-style farming, although there are many small-scale exemptions, and tends to use genetically-modified seeds.

Nonetheless, corn was born in a cultivation style that was not homogenous and, although selective crossing of corn plants did produce new varieties with desired traits, never was DNA manipulated so as to implant genes from different species that wouldn’t naturally cross, or so as to produce terminator seeds (seeds that essentially self-destruct). For thousands of years before the Green Revolution and before the first gene patent, corn had been grown in plots called milpas, which included different species of plants inter-mixed for their complimenting characteristics.

Milpa is a word in nahuatl, one of many languages that preceded Spanish in México. It refers to the small plots from which communities or families acquired their daily sustenance, mainly corn accompanied with beans, peppers, tomatoes, and other edible plants that were common in Mesoamerica. This form of agriculture has not died out, in fact it lives on in many parts of México and Central America. Through this project at Trent, we are attempting to introduce a different approach to feeding our communities in Southern Ontario. The traditional milpa-style agriculture innately avoids the use of chemical inputs, genetic modification, and the depletion of soils, while at the same time resulting in desirable yields and less disruption of ecological functions and cycles. An important conception is that where conventional large-scale farms are designed to feed a convoluted food system in a disproportionate manner, the smaller sized milpa provides enough produce to cover a community’s needs. In other words, it is a millenary practice that exemplifies small-scale, local, and sustainable agriculture.  

Background on the Milpa Project at Trent University

In May of 2011 shovels went into the ground in Peterborough, Ontario and the Milpa Project was born at Trent University. The intention of this project is to bring attention to the diverse ways in which agriculture can be approached in a sustainable fashion, meaning not depleting the soil but rather regenerating it, and  growing desirable crops in balance with the surrounding environment as opposed to deteriorating it. This project proposes polyculture influenced by milpa techniques that the coordinators, Benjamin Prowse (Ecological Restoration at Trent), Iván Wadgymar (Visiting Scholar at Trent), and Michael Sacco (PhD candidate in Indigenous Studies at Trent), have come across in their various fields of study and personal experience in Ontario, México, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.

The project entails the use of two plots of land, one that has been entirely hand tilled, while the other has had an initial tractor ploughing but none thereafter, meaning that both operate under low tillage. The least tillage possible is translated into less soil erosion and minimal disturbance to underground microbial activity that increases the richness of soil. Sustainability in small scale agriculture can also entail low capital investment and minimal technological inputs, which is what we put forth in this project. As a result, create-ivity has produced new upscaling techniques to avoid material costs and bicycle power to replace tractor or wheelbarrow dependency.

Trent University's Champlain College will also include demonstration gardens of the growing methods described above for all to see and experience as they enter the College. These demonstration gardens are intended to promote the use of urban settings for growing food. The first garden is almost complete and can be visited at anytime, it is located in the island at the entrance to Champlain College and includes edible flowers, tomatoes, onions, corn, beans, and peppers. The invitation is extended throughout the summer and to any of the plots, as well as the demonstration gardens.