View from the Cab: More corn please
By: Kent Casson
Who doesn’t love sweet corn season?
Really, what’s not to love? There is nothing like the satisfaction of biting into a big, juicy ear of corn covered in butter. Some boil it. Some steam it. Some even put it on the grill. However you eat your corn, just be thankful we live in Central Illinois where many sweet corn patches are at arm’s length.
We recently spent the day shucking, washing, cutting, boiling and freezing corn with my in-laws. Boy, do these people know how to work or what. That’s what I call efficiency on the farm as everyone has a job and you better not be twiddling your thumbs or they’ll find something for you to do. We were lucky to have a team effort or we still would have been over there working on that corn a week later.
Growing up, I only remember Mom freezing corn a couple of times. Otherwise, we enjoyed it straight out of the field for as long as we could during those dog days of summer. I do recall Mom cutting corn off the cob for my brother when he had jaw surgery as a teenager. Yes, I admit I snuck a few bites of that freshly-chopped corn but it is hard to resist those buttery clumps of sweetness.
One big benefit of freezing corn is being able to enjoy it all year long – even in the dead of winter. We often take it to holiday meals and everyone always enjoys it. Our kids have typically been good corn eaters although little Kaislee has only been taking a few bites out of each ear and that’s it. Perhaps she is already tired of sweet corn season? Say it isn’t so.
How many ears of corn can you eat at one meal? My limit is about two or even one if I have enough other food to eat with it. I know some who can put away four or five ears at once. Now that is a lot of corn! It’s practically a corn meal.
Sweet corn time seems to come and go fairly quickly each summer and before you know it, we are mowing down the sweet corn patches as the plants are too far along and the ears are gone. This means the real corn harvest isn’t terribly far off. If the sweet corn condition is any indication of the true corn yields this year, we could be pleasantly surprised out in the field.
Our garden isn’t doing bad either as we have already enjoyed green beans and are looking forward to tomatoes and peppers. Rebecca dug-up some giant radishes the other day. We aren’t huge radish people but it was impressive to see. Maybe all of that early July rainfall led to the giant vegetables out there.
