This week
is our third and final girls camp! It is is San Andres Xecul, Totonicapan, and
is about a 45 minute camioneta ride away from my house. When I got back to my
house yesterday I found one of the rooms in the house filled with a mountain of
corn that they had harvested that morning from their land. This corn was not
for eating – it was left on the stalk until it was almost dry. They will use
this for food for the pigs, to make tortillas and tamalitos, and to further
dry for next year. So I spent an hour or so last night helping them to shuck
the corn. This is apparently a woman’s job, so Minako, my host mom, three host
sisters and I sat around the pile and got to work. This was a fairly complex
process which I never really got the hang of. First there were two different
bags into which we put the corn husks: the good ones for making tamales, and
the bad/broken/dirty ones were to use as bedding for the pigs. There were also
three different ways to prepare the corn: 1) take all of the husks off – these
will eventually be ground up to make tortillas etc., 2) take all of the husks
off and put into a separate pile – these were the bad corn cobs that were to be
given to the pigs, and finally 3) take all but 2 corn husks off, pair that with
another similar cob, and tie them together – these were then put out to dry for
next year.
Great fun! The women folk sit around, shucking and gabbing.
ReplyDeleteJust think--tomorrow's tortilla may come from corn that you prepared.
Was any of the corn wormy? Do you know if they use any insecticides in their fields?
Reminds me of the Kansas corn fields. What do you call the room where you were shucking the corn? I was especially glad to see your host Mom's picture. She looks like a fun and lovely woman. I hope you'll have more opportunities to practice corn husking so you can show us how to make one of those beautiful bunches of drying corn. Love, Mom
ReplyDeletePlenty of corn! So you were a bit cornfused about the separation process? I can see why that would be. Looks like a good harvest from here, but overall, did they have a good crop yield? Hope the humans and pigs both got plenty.
ReplyDelete