Wondering about the story behind these magical rainbow seeds?
Where did they come from and how do they have all those colors on one single cob? How is there so much variation and it's the same kind of corn?
In 2021, as I started to fall into love with the seeds and develop a direct relationship through growing them, I deeply longed for knowledge of the people responsible for cultivating such a beautiful gift to the world and to my life. Mostly so that I could honor and thank them, praying that my work with these seeds would feed their lives!
Finding this Soundcloud interview from Greg Schoen changed the game for me. I had known of Carl Barnes, but getting the verbal story from his protégé who played such a vital and necessary role in getting these rainbow seeds into my hands gave me even more context of the powerful tool that these seeds provide for awakening to our cosmic destiny as human beings in this lifetime!
I loved learning about Carl's soul connection to the seeds and his spiritual wisdom that translate into their energy felt by all who wear them.
I know that many people prefer to read stories as opposed to hear them, so I took the recording told here in this soundcloud recording of Greg Schoen speaking and transcribed it for those of you who want to read it rather than (or in addition to hearing it!
This also gives me the ability to pull out little written snippets and share them here for you to digest these tasty morsels of holy goodness 🥰
Such as...
"One of the things that he used to talk about--he had a lot of really interesting sayings that were very deep. He used to talk about, almost like...a prophecy.
He said: The promise of the rainbow in the sky. 144 colors, tones and sounds. A new language of man.
Yes. And I went that, you know, I really imprinted on that.
(A cob of seeds that I grew)
I edited some of the direct transcription, taking out filler words to make it easier to read.
This recording was made in 2016.
Greg Schoen shares a Seed Story about the Glass Gem Rainbow Corn
My name is Greg Schoen. And what I'd like to talk about the story of the Glass Gem, rainbow corn. And I'm sure some of you all have heard about that particular interesting variety that has escaped and gotten out there in the, in the world.
I'd just like to share with you sort of a chronology and just some of the experiences and the journey of that corn from where it came from to where it is and where it's going. And I currently live near Silver City, New Mexico and I'm actually doing a lot of seed growing there. And so I've got a really good climate there. And I did get to grow the, the rainbow corn the last couple of years there.
So we're getting a lot of new seed along with the people at Native Seed Search who have been been really taking care of that. And I'll talk a little more about that. Some of you might be familiar with this little real brightly colored it's like a popcorn kind of a flint corn. There are about 4 or 5 inch long ears. And that sort of blew out onto the world scene about three or 2 or 3 years ago, around 2012, I think.
It has a past that goes before that. And back in 1995, I believe. Yeah. 1995, I was I'm originally from Oklahoma, and I was I was at a attending a native plant gathering in the southwest part of Oklahoma. A bunch of people got together and some herbal people and people doing just growing of different things.
And so I was seeing what, what all the people had. And there was an elderly man there with a big couple of glass display cases with all these varieties of corn, all these different native corns. And I was looking at all that. There were probably 2 or 3 maybe that were little, tiny. There were about four inches long, maybe not even that with all the colors. Not just like the earth tones and the reds and all the rainbow colors were in there in some way when you really looked at it.
I went, I think I need to get to know this guy. And I, you know, I think I need to find out how I can get some of those seeds. And it turned out that another friend of mine who knew him notified me a few months later, and this was Carl Barnes that had this seed. And he lived way up in the northwest part of Oklahoma. So he was far away from where I was in Oklahoma City, but he came down to visit his brother in law.
And so I went down to see him, and I asked him about that, that rainbow corn. And he pulls one ear out out of his pocket and, like, crunches off with his thumb, probably about 50 seeds into my hand. Kind of gives me that little wink of the eye, you know? And so that was that was like, that was in actually that was in '94 when I met him in the fall, and then this is in 95.
And then we had that Murrah building bombing in Oklahoma City, which sort of altered the consciousness of everything there. It was just maybe a week after that when everything was still kind of in that sort of eerie state about that. That was kind of like an initiation for the for that city. And I had that seed with me.
I was somewhere where I frequented, and I had that seed with me, and I, I opened my hand, I pulled it out of my pocket, and I was looking at it, and I just got this almost like this declaration that said, this seed is going to change things.
And then I just went, okay, I've got to plant this this year. We got to do it. So I just did it. I just planted it out in my backyard. It did really good. And it was really interesting. It had all these colors in there. And so what I was able to do is I got to where I was able to go up to see Carl, and there was a few different people that I knew that knew him. And we went up there and it was like a 250 mile trip, but I was able to get more samples of it.
If you just get it from one ear, you're getting just a very narrow genetic slice off of something. So, he had some more of it scattered through all of his stuff. And so I was able to get more samples of it that added to that.
At this point, I want to digress a little bit about Carl. He's still living. He's still living today. He is living with his oldest son. He's 87. And so he's just he's totally out of the public life with all that. So he stays with his older son and he pulled out of public life pretty much back around 2005 or so when after his wife passed away.
But he was half Cherokee and half like Scotch-Irish, and his grandfather was the one that mentored him about the seeds. He reconnected with his grandfather later on in his life or, you know, while he was young, but kind of like maybe teenager or when he was in his 20s. He started really asking about the seed.
And that was kind of where he got the knowledge. His grandfather was Cherokee, and they were in the opposite part of the state where the Cherokee were settled, where Carl got to the far western part of Oklahoma was through his dad, who moved out there to to farm. And then, of course, then they had the Dust Bowl. So he went through the Dust Bowl and then grew up in the 40s and 50s and started doing farming and also had other work that he did.
What happened is, as he started awakening to growing some of these old corn varieties, he started doing a lot with corn, and he was acquiring corn from different people. Some of the different tribes, some just old heritage varieties that were being grown at that, you know, back in, say, the the 30s and 40s.
As he started growing these out, he started seeing these other characteristics show up because these still had a lot of diversity in them. And in the course of all the work that he did, he was finding corn varieties that had been lost to a lot of the tribes.
Of course, Oklahoma was where they gathered through all the, the, the historical things that happened. All those different tribes were gathered into that one area. They called it Indian Territory back, way back.
He had contact with a lot of different people and knew what their corns were or what their corns were before they lost them. And so he was able to repatriate a lot of that.
We were talking about this at our gathering here, how when those things are restored, it restored their memory pattern. There was a disconnect. And those people were like brought back by that corn coming back into their life.
And so much of his work centered around that and around the spirituality that is embodied in the seed. And his main mantra was:
"The seed remembers".
That was the thing that sort of encapsulated everything that he had an understanding about.
One of the things that was really interesting, and of course, a lot of the people that he would...he would share all these stories about people that he was giving the corn to, and it would do different things. We're talking about all different kinds of corn, not the rainbow one and specifically, but other other traditional corns that he was working with that were ceremonial in quality as well as being a food plant.
A lot of people had these different experiences, different awakenings and insights and stuff just by being around the corn and growing it. He had a he had a deep understanding of the ceremonial ways of working with this and I had a particular interest in this little rainbow corn, but I also did acquire samples of some of his other ones, which I've been able to grow and, and he has one called the White Eagle Corn, which is one that I'll be growing this year.
But so like I said, I was growing this, this rainbow corn, getting more samples from him. And one of the things that he used to talk about in his just he had a lot of really interesting sayings that that were very deep. And he used to talk about almost like a prophecy.
He said: The promise of the rainbow in the sky. 144 colors, tones and sounds. A new language of man.
Yes. And I went that, you know, I really imprinted on that.Yes. And I went that, you know, I just really imprinted on that.
And then, he also talked about the corn is our blood. You know, the corn is like our very genealogy. It's like the same.
Around that time, there was an article that came out in a, in a paper in Oklahoma City that there were two people. One was a gentleman that was down south of town, and another one was a lady up in the northern part of the state. And they were both a Pawnee ancestry. And Pawnee is one of the Plains tribes that are originally from Nebraska. They have a lot of different corn. And they had some of the stuff that they had read had found either through Carl or through other means.
In the article, the two of them got together. Both of them were Native American, like I was saying, and they got together and they put this article together and they were saying how they were they were reacquiring their becoming. They had somehow found this corn again.
They said, if had we lost this corn permanently, we would have lost our language, you know, their actual native language that they can still speak. He said if they had lost the corn, their language would have died. And that just that was like--those were keys for me. I thought, there's something about this, about how you got bloodline, you got language and you got the seed. And they're like running together parallel. And so that was kind of my getting started in all this.
And so through those years, I was, I was playing around with this rainbow corn and then and getting, you know, get like I said, getting more examples of it from Carl. And then I moved out to New Mexico and continued growing it sporadically and and but it wasn't until 2005 that I was coming back.
I had been living in Arizona for a year, and I came back and I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone on the way back with my last load of stuff, and I said, I said, you know, I've really no, I've got to grow this rainbow corn, but it's it's kind of a dilemma because I really don't have a really good location to do this.
I said, you know what I said? I said, you know, what I really need is I really need somebody that's got the land, that's got the water, that's got the interest, and preferably Native American on Native American land. I just said this to her and she says, I know the guy. Two days later, I'm standing with José Lucero at Santa Clara Pueblo in the field. And we're going, we're going to plant this. We planted it right after that. It was like it was like the first week of June of 2005. And we planted that. We planted we actually planted some other corn's two other heirloom like northern New Mexico blue corns and some of the different things.
And, and so this rainbow corn was also planted around some other stuff. And I kind of knew that. I said, you know, this what I had may have, even though it was really interesting and it had a lot of characteristics to it, and it seems like it was really strong. I kind of knew that a little outcrossing with some of these others would give it the strength that it needed to make it and do what it needed to do. So it ended up being three years. They're growing this, but with other corn. And then the fourth year we just grew the rainbow corn.
That fourth year I just I said, I planted it and I said, do your stuff, show us what you can really do. And it's like it moved up to the next level. It was like the years of growing it with the others had it had infused that some of the genetic strengths to it.
And it just, just knew that it was it was like it had arrived. And I thought, yeah. And for probably a couple of years during that time, I was doing, I started doing all these photographs, just getting really nice digital photographs of this, of the really good examples. And I just started doing a bunch of that. And and then so 2008 was the fourth year, and then that was then I moved to another location much further south.
So I wasn't able to do that back and forth because I was living in Santa Fe at the time. I was, you know, half an hour away from from where José was. So it wasn't really practical to do that anymore. So I wasn't growing any of it for a while. But I had a really good lot of seed. It was like in good shape and I thought, and I'd been giving this out to a lot of people, and I've been giving it out to a lot of people up there in the Espanola Valley, up there, just when I I'd run across people, the farmers market or I'd just different people I'd run into and I'd say, try this out.
I thought this would be good to get this to establish itself in the greater corn culture of that region, because there are a lot of old indigenous corns that are that are grown all up and down that valley. And so I thought, wouldn't it be neat to just, if people felt like this was right, to adopt this into the stream of circulation of the gene pool of all the corn that's up there? And so that was kind of my my big dream.
It would get into the, into the culture here and then just become a permanent part of it. And so it was 2009, the year after, and I was living in that other location, and I decided to go out to Arizona and just visit with some of the different people that I knew when I was out there back around 2003 and 2004, and one of them was Bill Mcdorman. Bill was were doing a little workshop at the time. I think it was like one of the very first of the seed school ones. It was when that was just starting. And so I went on over and I brought him up as diverse of a sample, various bags of this rainbow corn, because I'd done some selections.
I basically had the, the stuff that had all the colors and then some that were more of the blue, the sky blue, and the different things. So I said, you might find this interesting. And then I gave, then I just, I gave them like a CD with a bunch of some of my digital photos. I said, here's a bunch of stuff that I put together for a slide show that I did for a couple of people, you know, and a little group of people up in Sedona once.
I said, you know, that you might find this interesting. And he took the seeds and I thought, you know, this guy. You know, I've always been careful about giving it to people that were more commercial. But then but he had a seed business, but his heart was in the right place. I said, he's going to have the right way with this, even though I mean, it's not like because there are there are people like sometimes you see, they're, they're, they're wanting they're like, oh, I can make a lot of money off of it.
Bill wasn't this kind of guy, you know? So even though he's doing a seed business, I thought, no, this guy is good to give it to. And so there it was, I and he thought, yeah. So he went ahead and grew and tried growing it.
He could tell you personally that it it blew him away as far as his sensitive awareness and awakened, you know, experience with seeds you know, I thought, okay. Yeah. And he told me about it. I said, yeah, he got it.
And so anyway, he in 2009, I gave it to him. And then and then I took off. I was doing other things for a while. I went up to Colorado for about a year and, and and I kind of lost touch with him, but I would look on his his Seeds Trust website, and he had published on his web page one little photo that was one little one really interesting little emerald green and kind of an azure blue colored little miniature ear, that of one of the dozens and dozens or bunches of seed of corn ears of that corn that I had taken photographs of.
I thought this is a really neat one. So I took, you know, I did pictures of that. And in that group of pictures that I did for that slideshow, I put captions under them all.
I used to use little names for these different ones because they I would see these reoccurring themes of colors showing up in the, in this and this one little one that I described, the caption was "Glass Gems", and he took that picture and said, wow. And he put that on his his web page.
It was just that way for a long time until probably early part of 2012. Some of my buddies that you used to know Carl were sending me emails saying, I think I saw your picture on some website somewhere. And I thought, well, I wonder if they're talking about Bill's.
So I looked up, they gave me this link and it's like, no, that's not his site. And so I was seeing it on some Australian food magazine. There's, there's that photograph and they're talking about. Hh my God, this is, you know, what is this. And there was some other thing. And so I thought, well, something's up. So I went back to Bill's Seeds Trust site and it said Bill's. Now Bill are the directors of Seed Search. And I'm going, oh my God. And they what they had done is some of his staff saw it because he had grown some of it and his staff got--the staff there, was really excited.
And they created an article based on the little bit of information that I had shared with Bill when I first gave it to him. So they put this together and did a pretty good job of it, and we had a couple little inaccuracies in it, but they pretty well said this is where it came from and all that.
I want to go back a moment with Carl. I asked him when I said, "Where did you get-- where did that originally come from?" And he said it was just by spirit.
And then I asked him another time and he gave me more of a concrete answer. He said there was a there was a lot of the colors came out of the Pawnee. There was. We're back to the Pawnee people, the Pawnee little miniature popcorns, which were, you know, basically a lot of what was left of that was in museums and perhaps an Osage variety. The Osage were another Plains tribe and Osage flint corn that went into that. And he said that's what he was playing around with when that stuff came on like that. So so back to to what, what they did at Native Seed is they, they put out an article and decided they wanted to grow it. And so everybody got excited about it. They were able to get more seed and it.
Basically what happened is, is a lot of my photographs went into some of the some of the publicity of it, but then there were others that people made of the newer seed, and it just took off like it did beyond anybody's, anybody's imagination.
I thought, well, this is, you know, Native Seed [Search]. I like what they're doing with the, you know, preserving all the old indigenous varieties. And I had a lot of respect. I said, well, this is a non-profit. Hey, if they can raise a bunch of money off this, great, you know, they can get it'll it'll help their organization and it'll help that cause. So I was good with that, you know? And so anyway, it went from there, and that's pretty much what happened.
And then what I've done is I've just continued to grow. I got to grow. I've been able to grow it for the last two years in a big, big amounts and bring back all the original, like my older seed and just keep the diversity and mix it and and refresh it. And I'm just giving it out to people like I have always just figuring that like I did in the very beginning, if this ever got patented, it would be in so many hands that it wouldn't be, it would be out there. So I figured it's out there. But it's kind of a, a unique like all the seed that we work with. It has a memory to it, and it has its own story that it carries--even the ones we don't even know it has.
It has its story. And there are a lot of things that happened to me through growing that, that I began to understand what Carl was talking about when he used to tell about all these people that would have these experiences when they were growing the corn of various kinds.
I started having it with this, and I'm going, okay, you know, I'm not crazy because, you know, he told me this was going to happen. And so now it's like, where does it go from here? And I just got to meet with Bill here at this gathering, and he was telling me about some of the people that are doing they're growing it out in large amounts and that they're finding new traits emerge from it.
We were talking about what's really the kind of--what its destiny is. And it's out there to, to bring I think it's serving to, to raise people's awareness and especially with little children with the really bright colors and things that they can really like.
And it's just been it's been a real pleasure to know that it went out there and it's, you know, it's got its own consciousness and its own way. And it's like all the seed does. We're just vectors. We're just handlers, you know, and yet we put part of ourselves. Everybody that handles it puts part of themselves in it.
Everybody that grows that corn is going to get slightly different results. I already saw it happen with this one friend of mine who grew some, and I said it has a whole different feel to it. And then and Bill was talking about the guy up in Idaho who grew it, and he says, it's all got these other colors we haven't seen yet. So the, the energy of the place and the, the whoever plants it will make a difference.
It's kind of an interesting mystery. And it's now going into the there are all those children are out there in the world making their way. So but that's pretty much the where it went and where it, where it came from.
And you know, it's pretty basic, you know, it's, it's a seed, like everything else, but it has that magic and like, all of it does. But I did want to add something because what Bill was asking me, he said, you know, he got people that want to take and select for certain colors and that that has its place because you can bring out some incredible, you know, translucent tones and but also it could all it could be that if it gets out there and crosses with other stuff and throws its pollen out there, that that genealogy just merging with the world of, of corn that's out there and even disappearing altogether because it's just hidden would be another, another pathway it can take at the same time that people are preserving it and in another way.
So I think it's it's kind of like it'll just go where it needs to go in its own and blend in. But but there are little corns like that that are out there that have some of those colors, but I don't think there's any of them that had all of them like that where they had the full spectrum.
But, but yeah, I'm glad I got to share this with you. And so if people are out there that, that, that find it or get access to it, they want to try it out. What I would suggest that they do is go on to there's a there should be it should be still there. Some of the people I think it was at Native Seed did a like a big Facebook page for it with people's photos and all that.
Through that you can probably get & find other people that have the seed. What I would suggest is that you get with a number of people that have been growing it, and share amongst yourselves to mix the diversity of it a little better, you know, because a lot of people would get it and they maybe they can only grow a dozen or two plants, and you really need to grow a couple of hundred or more for corn.
I would suggest to kind of like back out of any kind of inbreeding you might have had just from growing a little bit of it is find a bunch of people that have been growing it and say, hey, let's get together and pool it and then split it back up and it'll, like, refresh it completely.
And that's a neat cooperative thing to do to, you know, get to know other people and say, hey, I'm doing it too. And, and and then plant that and you'll have a real strong base. And then you want for corn, you want to have a minimum of 200 plants for seed saving. For seed saving, I would say 2 to 300 in a nice big block of plants and grow it like any other corn.
And let it, let it, let it completely, you know, completely dry on the, on the, in the ears. So they're, you know, totally ripe. And then what I would do is, you know, you're going to have people that are you're going to they're going to want to have you give one for like a gift or, or a something really pretty for them to put on their table or something. But that's great.
But what I would say if they if they want planting seed, get at least 100 or more of the really nice ones and blend all the seed, and then that's your seed saving seed that goes out to be shared. And then you tell them this is how to do it. You grow a bunch of it and and just have fun with it and give it to the, you know, the kids that are just starting to get back into gardening that, you know, if you just have like a little space and you want to just show it to them and they let them, let them do it.
But if people are wanting to do the seed saving because that's when you want to grow a lot of it. And so after, you know, after I'm all gone and next generations are happening, you know, this will be sort of percolating through.
It'll be interesting to be able to see what what form it takes. I think it would be really interesting for it to be intentionally grown with, say, some of the big blue corn and some of the others just to see what traits go through. This is more of a pop corn, flint corn. Sometimes it doesn't cross as readily with the bigger corn, but but it eventually it does. And you could get some really neat--some of those same color patterns could show up in the large corn and be be pretty pretty impressive. Yeah.
So, so that's where it came from. That's where it's going. And I figured, you know, I'd always knew that if it got to where I wasn't around to give it out, that it would be already in the, in the, in the deal. And so with what they did by distributing that, it worked out really well, I think.
