Restoring superstar crops

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It started with a desire to bring back Carolina Gold rice, the crop that helped shape the Lowcountry’s landscape and America’s early history.

The once-coveted long-grain rice disappeared after the 1890s, when hurricanes nearly wiped out the seed supply, but was renewed a century later with the dogged efforts of Glenn Roberts, who also resurrected several Southern dent corns that he mills into grits and cornmeal at Anson Mills in Columbia.

Roberts created the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and recruited University of South Carolina professor and author David S. Shields to pinpoint other lost antebellum foods worthy of adding back to the menu. “If something was historically important and good, someone somewhere saved it for some reason, and it’s retrievable in most cases,” says Shields.

Shields began by scouring agricultural journals from the 1800s and, after arriving at a checklist of desired ingredients, sought to uncover hidden growers or at least leftover seeds. Those discoveries have been nurtured by a network of people who ensure the proper history, science, growing methods and culinary uses are put into play.

One essential collaborator is Brian Ward at the Clemson Coastal Research and Education Center fields in Charleston. He takes seeds recovered by the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and turns them into viable crops for South Carolina growers.

Here’s a taste of their latest efforts:

Carolina African runner peanut

Considered the South’s ancestral peanut, this was a staple that could be boiled, roasted, made into soup, fried into fritters or ground into nut cakes, which street vendors sold into the early 1900s.

This small but flavorful peanut got lost in the mix as bigger varieties became more prominent. Shields thought the Carolina peanut was extinct, until he tracked down a few seeds in the freezer of a North Carolina State University professor and handed them over to Ward.

The Clemson research specialist has built up the crop, and while the historic fall rains hurt the 2015 harvest, he still has 1 million seeds to share with South Carolina growers. “I’ve been contacted by people all around the nation wanting these peanuts,” Ward says.

Candy makers like the small size of Carolina African runner, which can be used in a candy bar without being chopped or crushed. Researchers also want to explore whether the line’s resistance to disease could be bred into other peanuts.

Purple straw wheat

Shields suspects the flour from this wheat was a cornerstone of kitchens in the early South but is still trying to pin down the details on the line. “This purple straw wheat could be the wheat that all the famous Southern cakes were made of, as well as the whiskey.”

James Island Jimmy red corn

Native Americans likely grew this colorful dent corn, and a James Island family continued to harvest it in the 1900s, reportedly using it to make grits and moonshine.

Local grower Ted Chewning eventually took over as caretaker of the seeds, which he shares with others, including Ward, who has devoted a section of his fields to fine-tuning the line. One or two cobs recently popped up with purple, orange and white stripes. If the variation remains true, Ward may be able to develop it into a new line, though he says it would take several seasons. “I’m calling it Tiger Eye or Clemson Tiger Eye,” he says with a grin.

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