Sweet corn season

Is anyone else knee-deep in sweet corn about now? You are eating sweet corn once a day, and sometimes, it is even served as the main course.

I love sweet corn, don’t get me wrong; it is delicious. But there are a lot of foods I love and would still get tired of eating if I ate them every day for three weeks. The kids love sweet corn, too, and I never have to force them to eat their vegetables when we have sweet corn.

This year, I have frozen a few dozen ears and plan to freeze more. That way, I could back off on eating it every single day to just a few times a week. I still have lots left, as some of the corn in my garden has not yet ripened.

Not one to complain, I am thankful we have sweet corn to eat and freeze this year because last year, the raccoons found our patch and had more than their share. We ate some fresh but couldn’t freeze any. So, I have been having a hankering for fresh sweet corn for a while.

There is something about homegrown sweet corn that store-bought corn cannot replicate, which can be said about a lot of produce.

One year, when I was growing up, we planted a section of sweet corn in the field and then set up a sweet corn stand in the metropolis of Burtrum to make some cash. My brothers and I took shifts at the stand for a couple of days. We did not make a ton of money, but it was fun and a learning experience. The following year, we offered you-pick at our farm, but that did not get a lot of attention. We wound up freezing all we could pick.

Freezing dozens upon dozens of ears of sweet corn is quite the process for any of you who have not been involved in such an endeavor. While it is a simple process, it is very tedious and time-consuming. Cleaning up takes almost as long as preparation, as the kernels are sticky, so they did not sweep very well with a broom. Generally, we feed the husks to the heifers and toss the corn cobs into the manure pit.

The process takes several hours, but it is well worth the effort to have delicious sweet corn available for the next 12 months.

Being involved in the agriculture industry my entire life, I thought corn was the most basic and common crop. That is not the case. When I was a teenager, I heard about a couple who moved from the Twin Cities to my area and tried to operate a hobby farm. In their backyard, they planted corn, which they thought was sweet corn, but was actually field corn. To the untrained eye, that is an understandable mix-up.

As well, last week I saw a video on social media of a news anchor who was talking to a gardener. The news anchor asked the gardener why her sweet corn gets so big and tall and green, but when she digs it up, she never finds any corn. Through bursts of laughter, her co-news anchor and the gardener explained to her that the corn does not grow underground but on the stalk itself. She took the news well and joined in the laughter.

This video provided a good laugh but also a lesson: What may seem common and obvious to us is not to everyone.

I also read an article about farmers in Europe who have started hosting public tours to watch farming firsthand. On certain days, at certain times, farmers open their farm so consumers can watch them work. These sessions are selling out in some cases. One farmer in the article said they would not be able to keep farming due to poor commodity prices, but since they started this form of agritourism, they are well off.

As farmers, we also need to be educators, teaching the next generation and a non-farming audience the importance of what we do.