Haudenosaunee corn at this 'green corn' stage is similar to our sweet corn and is ready to eat. The Haudenosaunee used some of the crop at Green Corn Festival time, but most was left to ripen and was harvested in the fall. Ripe corn was dried and stored for winter use.

The silk on the ear of corn in the photo indicates that this ear is nearly ready to pick as green corn, but wait another day or two until the silk becomes a little drier and darker brown.

The tool with the long handle and curved blade is a replica of one described in the 1620s, as a wooden hoe used in cultivation. It was pictured in a French missionary's report in 1685. It's hard to imagine how it works. It is commonly believed that the Haudenosaunee used the shoulder blades of deer as hoes.

The young girl on the platform is ready to scare off the flock of blackbirds that are headed to the fields from the background of the exhibit. Protecting the crops from birds, raccoons and other pests was an important activity.

Corn, beans and squash were commonly planted together in the same 'hill'. After the corn plants are growing, soil is piled up around their stalks to help keep them upright in the wind. Women did the farming, assisted by children, and at harvest time, by old men. Weeding was important to help the crops thrive and to keep the forest from encroaching into the fields.

The old man is scraping the kernels from an ear of corn with the teeth and jawbone of a deer. The corn will drop into a vessel made from the bottom part of a large gourd. Gourds were used as vessels for various purposes. None are shown growing in the exhibit, but the Haudenosaunee did cultivate them.

The squash vines here are replicated from modern pumpkin vines, and the fruit from a modern variety of squash. Scholars of these subjects believe this combination to look like a variety of squash grown by the Haudenosaunee in the 1600s.

Growing corn and beans together is good practice: the corn stalk provides a trellis for the beans AND the roots of the bean plants nourish the corn by fixing nitrogen in the soil, which is depleted by the corn.

The corn and bean plants in the exhibit are plastic replicas of plants grown by modern-day Haudenosaunee. The seeds were passed down from the 1600s through many generations of crops.

The plants that resemble small sunflowers are Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus), a plant native to the Mississippi Valley. The Haudenosaunee grew this plant for its tuberous 'roots', which somewhat resemble potatoes.

Early European visitors took this plant home where it became a popular food.

Fernald and Kinsey, in their book, Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America, tell us that: "The name Jerusalem applied to this plant is likely to lead to misconception. The tubers, early introduced into Europe, were soon popular in the Mediterranean countries and in Spanish were called girasol, in Italian girasole. True to their genius in such matters the English promptly changed it to Jerusalem."

Girasole translates to 'turning to the sun'.

In the background of the photograph: the high rounded crown is a sugar maple (Acer saccharum); to the right of it, the tall tree with horizontal branches is a white pine (Pinus strobus)

The scattered dead trees in the background are the American elm (Ulmus americana). These trees died because their bark was stripped off to shingle longhouses. Dutch elm disease, which is currently killing this species of trees in the Northeast, was brought to this continent in modern time.

These 'weed' plants, which are in the left foreground of the diorama, include some of those found in the area today in late August. Several are shown in bloom for artistic effect; however, in nature, all of these might not be in bloom at the same time, but all bloom in the late summer. All are native plants, but today they would not be the dominant weeds at the edge of a field. Most of our present-day weed plants are immigrants from Europe and Asia.