And by "scale", I mean anything more than a large garden size patch?

I think I started growing Bloody Butcher heirloom corn from a 2 ounce garden packet, off and on, since 2018. By last year, I had half a bushel (about 28 pounds) from 2024 and some from 2023. I talked my old, fading, organic farmer friend into planting 14 pounds (first photo is my seed bucket after using half of it) in an acre+ oddball field he has off of his main big field. Its known as the "triangle" on the farm.

Bloody Butcher is a 120 days corn and we planted it probably at its outer most planting date
because of various drama (including a farm accident tragedy) that occurred on his place from late April through the first week of June. I told him this stuff will grow 12 feet tall under optimal conditions but somehow I don't think that translated to not planting it 6 inches apart. I would have preferred more like 10-12 inches between plants but it was his machinery and he had just finished his organic hybrid yellow corn.

The "triangle" grew soybeans (or sort of did) last year so the new corn plants got a bit of a N kick and nice timely rains in June. I don't expect many 12-foot tall plants but as long as I get some grain out of it, I'll be happy. I sell my various colored corn for direct human consumption, in whatever form, by the pound and not by the bushel. I'm just curious if any tman people have grown a field of Bloody Butcher before or not.

Roger, how long has your corn been in? I hope you get the rain you need.

Did you keep any seed back in case you have a bad year?

How's the seed business going?

Keith

Never grew the corn, but it's certainly not "knee high by the 4th of July."

The Bloody Butcher was planted on June 8 which would put its full maturity around the end of the first week of October. That's about our average for the first frost come around were, although they can be earlier then that. I suspect I won't be harvesting any BB until into November, I have two other larger "patches" of different colored corn to start picking before then. If I have to, I'll be sledding out Bloody Butcher all winter and competing with the deer, I've done it before with "squirrel" corn to sell. If we have snow. We'll see.

Yes, I have about 15 pounds that I could plant next year somewhere if I have a complete failure with this attempt.

There was news with the garden veggie seed selling business in that I finally got Google Ads off of my back and my website is no longer suppressed by Google. And Google Ads even allowed me to spend money with them!! So, there was a flurry of activity at the end of May and the first week or so of June, which is very late in the seed selling world, but lessons learned. You can read about it in a recent Substack essay of mine: https://sodakfred.substack.com/p/my-unresolved-fight-with-google-ads-047



That is a very old "wive's tale" of corn growth. Modern GMO hybrids around here, with the decent June rains, are at least shoulder height of an average sized man by July 4. The conventional farmer world is also looking at $4 or less a bushel ( a bushel of corn is 56 pounds) this fall. The only way they are going to make a profit is through sheer volume of production by acre, and this year, with Brazil just coming off a record corn production year, sheer volume may not even work. That's what happens when you play in the global agricultural commodity world but that's grist for another time.

The common commodity corn farmer can roll into any grain buying business and sell their yellow by the truck load. I can't do that with my colored corn, at least not around here, my stuff would all be considered "error" and they probably wouldn't even buy it. I have to network to sell my colored corn and most of it goes to direct human consumption wheres common commodity corn does not, at least in its most basic form. It goes into livestock/other animal feed, into making ethanol, or taken apart at the molecular level and recreated into dozens of products to be used in processed foods you find in the grocery store, either at room temperature shelf stable or in the frozen food sections. You actually eat a lot of common commodity corn if you do the typical American diet, you just won't recognize it in many of the products you buy.

As I said before, I sell my various colored corn by the pound so take 75 cents (its usually more than that but say that as a base price) a pound times 56 pounds and figure out how much I take in per bushel. But I nowhere produce 200 (or more) bushes per acre so I can't compete with the common commodity folks which I'm not trying to do in the first place. None of my colored corn has crop insurance on it, I would be laughed out of most of the offices that sell it around here if I tried to buy it. All I have is my sweat equity to lose and maybe some fertilizer costs. Almost all common commodity producers have to have crop insurance on their efforts because they could lose hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars if they were disaster-ed out during the season. A whole different world from what I'm trying to do.

Just on the garden scale for me. I’ve got a couple 12’ stalks this year after some great timely rains. Grew about 3000 sq ft a few years ago and ended up with a bunch of seed left over after grinding a bunch for cornmeal and grits.

Is it as good as Jimmy Red for making shine?

Nice action, sportsman94!! Here's me in front of a larger garden patch size in September, 2023





Maybe... Of course, if you believe the hype story that Jimmy Red was down to its "last two ears" before the line went extinct. I suspect that was some shrewd marketing...

Used to grow 3-4 acres of ornamental corn for our roadside stand tried a lb. of bloody butcher for a couple years as darker corn seemed to be a better seller was tall not close to 12 feet but took to long to mature here

That's a bummer to hear, I have a bag of seed from a fellow member, I was all excited to plant it this year but didn't get it in on time, saving it for next year and I guess I'll try and get it in real early

I have a couple other colored corn growing at 'scale" this year. One is a newer open pollinated variety called "Montana Morado Maize" developed by a private plant breeder and his friends out of Montana. He had "perfected" a more typically looking "Indian" corn called "Painted Mountain" and used that base to add in a darker "purple" color, although the kernel color is actually more black but the ground meal is a light purple. Personally, I think he got some "Peruvian Morado" (a stubby ear but has a high cool temperature tolerance variety) and crossed it back and forth with his Painted Mountain until he got the Painted Mountain ear length but the Peruvian Morado color coming out almost exclusively but he doesn't say that the various videos or print media where he is interviewed.

I bought two 5-pound bags from a well known Northeast organic garden seed company in January of 2023 for a premium price (over $100 a bag) but then my brother got a wild hair and bought two more bags as well so in the end, I had my elderly organic farmer friend plant a strip of it (15 pounds) on the edge of one of his soybean fields. I think that ended up being about 0.9 of an acre. It took me a while to network with the right people but I sold my last 9 5-gallon buckets (basically a half a bushel each) the first part of this year. After I took out my sales tax, the final price was above 80 cents a pound and I kept my "food grade" plastic buckets. One sale was to an owner of a newer downtown Mexican restaurant who I knew when we both sold things at a suburban "farmers market" for a few years. I had given her extended family some to sample in 2023 but there must have been a miscommunication where "M" never saw it and we reconnected again on a Facebook (a tri-state corner region) rummage sale group. I gave them one bucket worth to play with and then M bought my remaining "food grade" kernels for $100 and used it up in about a month's time. She wanted more but I was out except my seed bucket so I'll see if she still wants a good amount of the acre+ of it I have growing come October. It also got a later start but its only a 85-day corn .

Here's a couple photos of my 2023 MMM corn. I'm sure there may be some comments about them but please keep it "clean"






I'm also trying a new heirloom blue corn this year called "Ohio Blue Clarage" or "Blue Clarage" at another friend's non-organic truck garden. I bought about 4 pounds of this OBC corn from a farmer in Pennsylvania that grows a number of heirloom grain and old "distilling" corn lines. His price was very cheap, the postage was more than the seed. He doesn't take CCs but uses Paypal. My other friend planted the OBC corn when he put in his "late" GMO sweet corn and for some reason-- maybe his old 4-row air seeder started having issues, our 24 rows (each about 200 feet long) had "population" issues, with the rows closest to his late sweet corn more filled out than the outer ones when the amount of seed left in the cylinder started to get low. That got planted on Memorial Day so the plants a couple of days ago were pushing towards 3 feet tall and supposedly OBC corn will also grow up to about 12 feet tall under the best of conditions (it has been a known variety back to the early 1800s, longer than Bloody Butcher).

The between rows have gotten pretty weedy so he has been looking around for an old 4-row cultivator while I've been swinging a hoe to get a "visual" for him to line up the cultivator. The only problem has been that this patch is over 30 miles from my house so I've only been over there about 4 times weeding. The ear filling out might be less than ideal in the outer rows but we'll see how things turn out. OBC is a 100 day corn. Here's an internet stock photo of what it looks like, mostly dark blue with occasional white kernels.

Interesting stuff, we grow sweet corn to sell here. I am curious how you harvest, is it all picked and shelled by hand? The weeding by hand is a tough row to hoe, no pun. Is your operation organic?

Great photos!

I call it "chemically free". The 2023 Montana Morado Maize corn was listed on the organic farmer's manifest (the goof called it "blue" corn) but supposedly it only could be called 'USDA Organic" if he sold it. I would need my own certification (supposedly) for the same crop so the USDA contracting company would get paid twice for the same thing. That's how he explained it, whether that is actually true or not, I'm not going to find out because the "organic" label doesn't mean that much to most of the people I sell to.

So far, things have been hand picked and shelled, although a hand cranked corn sheller is in the future. I might have some friends help pick on some days. I also have more time on my hands so more time to pick during most days this fall. It appears that the only way I'll be able to hunt deer in my county this year is through archery (non-lottery tags), I may pick early in the afternoon and set up for the evening sit (maybe in the corn) with my bow.

Yes, the weeds in the bigger patches are an issue. I've used a string mower at the location where the Ohio Blue Clarage is growing and probably will have to again. My friend there bought a old 4-row cultivator and he tried it out last night but it really didn't do the job. My main concern there is more about having things such as the annual grasses and redroot pigweed seeding out and adding to the weed seed bed but he has a patch of oats that he was going to cut for straw and that is also full of pigweed so its not just my patches that are "contaminating" his field .

It rained again last night so stringer mower over there might have to be in a day or so.

You seem to have a lot invested in this "hobby" You have to watch your tractor speed and tillage depth but corn can be cultivated at the 5-6 leaf stage earlier you need rolling shields to keep from burying corn plants

Mostly just time and some fertilizer money. None of the machinery is mine. Its better than sitting in a bar for four hours or so a day.

Not a photo of my Bloody Butcher corn but of my Ohio Blue Clarage corn. I have that growing over at my buddy's truck garden place. Its is a heirloom corn that has lineage back to the early 1800s from the eastern Ohio River Valley.

My patch was 56 days in as of Monday (supposed to be a 100 day corn) and was showing no signs of tasseling yet. I suspect that will happen by the end of the month. Most plants are pushing 6 feet tall, some up to 8 feet already. I think we'll have some 10 foot individuals before its all said and done. Just keep the hail and strong winds away 🙂

My hat in this photo is about 6 feet off of the ground.



I'll post some photos of the Bloody Butcher when that finally tassels and see how tall some of those are at that point.