**4. The diversity of La Milpa**

Native Corn offers a framework to understand human and more-than-human interactions by instructing us about how plants are teachers in a human's life. Settler colonialism and its effects disrupt the ways in which Native communities related to nonhumans. In Mexico, the commodification of Native species of Corn and other plants for human consumption and use in the pharmaceutical industry disrupted the "kincentric" relationship between humans and plants [22]. This kincentric relationship maintains Our Mother Corn as central to the life of families for not only ceremonial purposes but in the daily life of families to provide a framework to live life in wellness. Since 2021, students at Kalamazoo College have been cultivating Native

Corn seeds in the Hoop House. This action has been performed to maintain and sustain the livelihood of Native Corn from Mexico in the USA. However, cultivating Corn without a community contradicts the notions of kinship. For this, students at Kalamazoo College every year make a commitment to continue learning from Native seeds. In the summer of 2023, students from K learn from Our Mother Corn the multiple ways of growing in a different environment. Building on the work of the previous years, during the cultivation and the harvest, students measure and record the growth of the plants to assess how the local environment can help or support the growth of Our Mother Corn. The objective of the project is to predict how can we better adapt Native seeds from Mexico in Michigan. Furthermore, this project aims to understand the different changes in climate that can benefit or impact the growth of Corn. Students conduct research on soil, rain patterns, and temperatures to compare the results with the environment in Mexico. Finally, students will share with the community, their findings, and results to continue growing native seeds from Mexico.

In a study, Woznicki et al. [23] examine the effects of climate change on the cultivation of Maize and soybeans to understand the demands of irrigation in the Kalamazoo River Watershed of Michigan. The authors demonstrate that "there will likely be less water available during the growing season in the future, or evapotranspiration will be hindered due to temperatures stress in peak developments of corn" ([23], p. 252). This study suggests many adaptations to agricultural practices concerning irrigation to foresee future climate changes. Like this study, in the La Milpa Project we aim to predict some of the adaptations to maize in a new climate. Although Woznicki et al. do not discuss the type that maize cultivated; their conclusions are important to La Milpa Project. Due to the change in rain patterns in Kalamazoo, the project interns use an irrigation system in the garden. Another study by Schlüter et al. [24] discusses the different stress adaptions of maize such as low temperature, low nitrogen (n), and low phosphorus (P) stress. Like the study by Schlüter et al., the different types of stress that plants undergo in the Hoop House have an impact on the growth and the plant biomass [24]. However, many studies suggest that corn can be adapted to other climates using different agricultural strategies [25, 26]. Moradi et al. suggest to "consider the early maturing cultivars of maize in agro-ecosystems" ([26], p. 1236). In their study of maize adaptation in Iran, the authors selected "eight cultivars of maize with three growing stages periods" (1233: 2014). This selection allows for the collection of data and demonstrates the importance of early cultivation. On the other hand, Lorant et al. suggest that maize is genetically diverse and "worldwide consists of locally adapted open-pollinated populations (landraces) as well as modern inbred lines, derived from landraces, that are used in hybrid production for modern breeding" ([25], p. 676). All these studies take into consideration the different strategies for maize adaptation. The main goal of our study is to understand Maize adaptation to climate change.

#### **4.1 Data collection**

The first season was on May 10th, 2022. We cultivated five colors of Native Corn from Northern Mexico. We began the cultivation following traditional protocols and cultivated inside the Hoop House and outside in the rain garden. We started some seeds in planters to maximize germination. After five days, on May 15th, the seeds germinated and began the *Naika* ("sprout") stage, and we repotted them outside on May 29th and June 2nd. In the rain garden, we repotted the plants following the Wixárika arrangement of the Cornfield: in the front row, three plants of White Corn

#### *Teachings of Tatéi Niwetsika: Native Maize from Northern Mexico DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112629*

in the direction of the North, in the back two plants of Blue Corn in the direction of the south, to the right three Pink Corn in the direction of the West, to the left two Yellow Corn in the direction of the East, and two multi-color plants in the center. By June 23rd, our plants were in the vegetative stage or first leaf Y + ra ("Growing Greener"). The decision to cultivate the five variants of Our Mother Corn came as a community agreement. When I consulted with Felipa Rivera, she advised me to cultivate all the colors to have them together in the field. Along with Our Mother Corn, we cultivated flowers and other companion plants including tomatoes and kale inside the Hoop House, and milkweed and calendula in the rain garden. We used organic fertilizers, such as kelp fertilizer, to add extra potassium to the soil, and chicken manure for nitrogen, sulfur, and potassium. On July 12th, the plants reached a length of seven feet long inside the Hoop House and three feet long in the rain garden. On August 16th, the plants began the stage of tassel or *Tsakuluma, M + ayama, Tukima* ("To Tassel" or "VT Tassel"), and on August 27th, silking or K + paima. On August 30th, Yellow Corn was tasseled and on September 6th, the rest of the plants were tasseled. All the stages of Our Mother Corn corresponded with a Wixárika's personal names that connect human persons with plant persons [7].

Given the size of the growing garden, initially, Amy Newday (Mellon Fellow for Experiential Learning at Kalamazoo College) and myself were concerned with how close the population of plants was growing. With this, we began asking questions about cross-pollination. For many families in Tepic, cross-pollination is not really a concern. Families cultivate different variants of seeds and expect that some ears come with genetic modifications in color. Many families utilize this diverse Corn for corn-based drinks. In our first harvest, we were able to harvest a mature yellow ear of Our Mother Corn from the rain garden. In the Hoop House, there is an irrigation system and outside plants were watered with a water hose and rain. Inside the Hoop House, the plants grew over 2 m in length and matured very late in the season. On September 23rd of 2022, Nora Blanchard (Hoop House intern and K student) began hand-pollinating the plants. This was done with the hope of capturing pollen to help the plants in the process of pollination. This technique was useful because inside the Hoop House with the absence of wind, the pollen could not travel far. Due to the long days in Michigan, the plants were exposed to sunlight for about 12 h a day. Some plants released pollen early in the morning and some others released pollen in the afternoon (Data collected from personal conversations with Amy Newday and Nora Blanchard, Summer 2022).

On October 7th, the plants began the process of milking (*Saulima* or *Sutuli* stages). We prepared everything for the offerings during the harvest festival on campus. Some of the research questions we attempted to answer that summer were as follows: 1) What can we learn from genetics and cross-pollination? 2) How can the selection of seeds help to maximize the growth of plants in the next season? 3) Is it possible to cultivate multiple colors in a small population of plants? 4) How can we improve the fertility of plants? And 5) What can the roots teach us about Our Mother Corn?

The second cycle of Our Mother Corn began on May 20th of 2023. This time we decided to cultivate only yellow corn since based on the observations of the previous year these plants were more successful than the other colors. The seeds came from a selection of two batches (1) the seeds from Mexico and (2) the seeds from the fully mature ear of Corn from the previous year. Also, Zoe Reyes, the 2023 Hoop House intern, reported that the companion plants cultivated included: beans, squash, peas, amaranth, mullein, catnip, evening primrose, black-eyed Susan, daisy fleabane, and marigolds. The total number of Our Mother Corn plants cultivated was 48 plants in

12 mounts outside in the rain garden. We directly planted the seeds into the soil during our cultivation ceremony after the blessing of the seeds on May 23rd. In the following days, we visited Cornfield again for 5 days to follow the protocols of the Wixárika community and made some offerings. We did not see any seeds sprouting. A week after the cultivation on May 30th, some seeds sprouted. Also, Amy noticed that some seeds were missing, and others were not fully grown. The outside garden is the house of many other animals, insects, and plants. To avoid predators, Amy planted more seeds in pots inside the Hoop House and she transplanted those plants. On June 8th, some plants were transplanted. On June 13th, another batch of seeds was planted. Those seeds sprouted on June 22nd and then transplanted on June 27, 2023. The total population of plants was 45. Our research questions this season were: 1) how do the different seeding dates (May 23rd, June 7th, and June 13th) affect the flowering dates? 2) How can we improve the fertility of plants? What can we learn from our plants this season? 3) How is it growing in this environment affected by the soil, water, rain, and sun?
