How a Seed Library Saved a Variety of Cornmeal No One Else Was Growing
A volunteer-run library in southern Appalachia tracked down a 1930s field corn that commercial agriculture had forgotten. Now four mills are stocking flour.
The flour is called Bloody Butcher. The kernels look like garnets. The variety was nearly extinct.
For most of the twentieth century, it grew in pockets of southern Appalachia, planted by farmers whose grandfathers had planted it. By 2010, an informal census by the Appalachian Seed Library counted fewer than two dozen growers still keeping the line going. Most were over seventy.
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