Calais flint corn- only type to survive the Year Without a Summer (1816)

[230gr]

Calais flint corn
  Originally cultivated by the western Abenaki people in Vermont and subsequently grown and maintained by pioneer farmers. This flint corn was the only type to survive and produce a crop in Vermont during the infamous Year Without a Summer (1816), when snow fell in June and killing frosts struck in every summer month. The unusually cold weather resulted from the ash cloud that filled the upper atmosphere and blanketed the Northern Hemisphere following eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies. In Vermont, some rural families subsisted on hedgehogs (porcupines?), boiled nettles, and clover heads. Of more than 100 families, after 1816, only three families still remained.
   The strain is somewhat variable, but plants typically grow 6 to 7 feet tall and bear 8- to 12-inch-long ears with eight rows of kernels that vary in color from golden yellow to dark maroon red. They are significantly higher in proteins than most flint corns (11% to 12% instead of 9%).