A Feast for the Eyes – The Beautiful Glass Gem Corn
The
story of Glass Gem corn began with Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee farmer
from Oklahoma who noticed that every once in a while some of his corn
cobs had strangely-colored kernels, and dedicated his life to creating
the agricultural wonder you see below. Nobody knows exactly how many
years Barnes spent worked on the unique cereal, how many successive
seasons he carefully chose, saved, and replanted these special seeds,
but one thing is for sure – his painstaking efforts had a truly
mind-blowing result, a new breed of corn that most people consider a
work of art rather than a cereal.
Before
he died, Barnes, passed on his precious collection of Glass Gem Corn to
Greg Schoen, a fellow corn breeder, entrusting him with a very
important mission – to make sure his amazing discovery was not lost.
Carl’s protégé stayed true to his promise to safeguard the stunning corn
breed and eventually passed on several unique corn varieties to
fellow seedsman Bill McDorman, who owned Seed Trust, a small seed
company in Arizona. He had never seen the actual corn cob, but curious
about the odd name of the breed, he planted a few seeds just to see what
it looked like. “I was blown away,” the farmer remembers. “No one had
ever seen corn like this before.” Mr McDorman is now head of Native
Seeds/SEARCH, a non-profit organisation which tries to preserve the
agricultural heritage of Native Americans, including Glass Gem Corn.
Native
Seeds/SEARCH sells Glass Gem Corn seeds through their website, but ever
since word about its uniqueness spread through the internet, the
variety is constantly sold out. When the first photos of this stunningly
beautiful corn variety went viral, the demand was so great that the
organization’s website went down from the sudden increase in traffic.
You can Glass Gem Corn seeds for $7.95 per packet and use it to make
popcorn or flour, but it also makes an impressive gift or souvenir.
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