In my young apprenticeship, I'm discovering that studying, researching, and writing on the Civil War is one of the truly great jobs, and I'm glad to have it. That said, it has its moments that tend to turn many people off.
I spent the better part of this afternoon trying to figure out how much cornmeal I could get out of a bushel of corn. Second, how many people would that feed, and for how long? Those have a lot of sub-questions, too. Are these "bushels" by volume or weight? (Gotta be volume; the new bushel-as-weight thing is recent. But does the weight correspond to a typical volume-bushel of corn?) When I read that the army had so many bushels of corn, can I assume that that means parched kernels, or could it possibly be ear corn? (I'm assuming kernels; that's gotta be the only reasonable way to ship and store the stuff. And it'd make a bushel, by weight or volume, completely unpredictable if it included cobs.) What books do I have that might answer such a question? (More than you'd think. If you wanna understand the south, or the Civil War, you gotta understand corn and hogs.) (And sweet potatoes.) Shoot; none of my books come out and tell me. What other books are out there? (I verily rejoiced when I found a 1916 manual of crop husbandry and utilizing at a nearby library.)
And you know what? I had fun doing all that. Academia is finding a field in which you are willing and able to become a complete dork. Fortunate those of us who find such a niche.
And, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to track down some parched corn I can put through my blender.
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