Look at This Amazing Corn Cob House!

Having moved on from the more delicious sweet corn season of summer, we now find ourselves laden with weird hard flint corn, sometimes called Indian or ornamental corn. And in truth, there are not all that many uses for this very hard cold-season corn; some varieties can be made into popcorn, and others can be treated with lye to turn them into hominy, but mostly the multicolored ears are used simply as decoration.

Farmer Liu Hongcai sees things differently. Liu, who lives in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, bought 30,000 remarkably similar cobs of flint corn and used them to build not just a house, but a compound. His bright yellow corn cobs, along with some metal bracing, form the entire structure of a small farmhouse, a large fence, a water wheel, and a small shed.

Liu’s goal, he told the Daily Mail, was to create a replica of a traditional northeastern Chinese architectural style, common to the area. By building out of corn, he could attract visitors. The entire project took about two weeks, required the help of 14 friends, and cost around $1,500 in raw materials. (The raw materials are corn.)

Here’s a video, courtesy of People’s Daily.