Sweet Corn

The sun shined bright in the mid morning sky as the Henning crew made their way through the sweetcorn patch. The stalks, still wet from the morning dew, rustled and shook in response to the movements of the multi-generational picking team. Richard, Clyde and Dale each carried a burlap feed sack through the straight rows as Caleb, Scott, and Kelsey walked alongside picking ears of corn as they went. Not every ear got picked as many of them weren't ready yet. In a year that had ample rainfall throughout the summer, a sweetcorn patch required two or three pickings before the end of the summer. Each picker would feel each ear before picking to see if the ear was big enough to pick. The younger pickers, unsure of their abilities, often pealed back a couple inches of the husk to get a glimpse of the corn underneath to determine the readiness of a particular ear. If the ear was ready, it would be plucked from the stalk and tossed into the nearest bag. If it wasn't, it would be left behind for the next picking. As each bag was filled to capacity, it was carried to the bed of Mean Green which was parked at the edge of the field. Mean Green was Dale's pick-up truck. It was a green long-bed F-250 with an extended cab. 

The sweet corn patch stood at the edge of one of the farm's corn fields. In the spring, Dale had chosen a spot that he thought would serve the sweetcorn well and had used the corn planter to plant a sizeable patch of sweetcorn. There was a little cross-pollination on the row nearest to the field corn that left some of the kernels a little tough, but the general result of Dales efforts were quite positive. The sweetcorn benefited from the fertilizer that had been applied to the field and always produced well. Despite the size of the sweetcorn patch, it took the picking crew less than an hour to finish their task. Once they were done, the children and their grandfather piled into the back of the truck as Dale and his Uncle Clyde climbed into the cab.

Dale drove the truck to the milkhouse stoop where he backed the truck up to the cement pad. The crew unloaded the corn and duped the bags into a huge pile on the concrete and began the husking process. The experienced huskers were able to split the silky tuffs at the tip of the ear and peal the husks and the silk away from the white and yellow kernels and snap the stem off the end of the ear without leaving a single strand of silk on the corn. The less experienced huskers, which were pretty much limited to the youngest generation, spent most of their time picking individual strands of silk off the ear until it was finally clean enough to toss into the “husked” bag. Finally, after just over an hour, all the corn was husked. The husks were tossed over the gate into the barnyard for the dairy cows to enjoy and the ears were loaded back into the truck and hauled up to the house.

The truck was parked beside the fire pit that was a couple hundred feet away from the back porch door of the white farmhouse. Richard set up a metal tripod over the fire pit and directed his grand kids to start hauling water to fill up the oversized pot that he was about to hang from the tripod. He set to work building a fire as the children filled the cauldron with water. Before long, a fire blazed around the cast iron pot and the water inside began to steam and eventually, boil. 

Clyde began filling several wire egg baskets with ears of corn as Dale set up a shiny galvanized waste barrel beside the house. He filled the barrel with cold water from the spigot and returned to the fire pit to check on the progress there. Dale picked up a six foot long pole with a hook on the end. He looped the hook underneath the handle of on of the egg baskets and dipped the basket and it's contents into the boiling water. He glanced at his watch and turned to his second son.

“Okay, Scott,” he explained. “In ten minutes I'm going to pull these ears out of the water and carry them over to that silver barrel. Your job is to keep the ears under water until they're cool enough to cut the corn off. You'll have to keep water running into the barrel to keep it cool enough. Also, you'll probably be soaked, but I don't suppose you'll mind.”

“Nope,” Scott responded with a smile. “I don't think I'll mind one bit.”

Dale dipped the hook into the pot and pulled the basket out. He placed it on the ground and dipped a second one into the water. He glanced at his watch before grabbing the handle of the hot basket with his gloved right hand. He carried it over to the barrel of water and dumped the hot corn into the cold water. Scott, who was questioning in his head why the saying was more fun than a barrel of monkeys and not more fun than a barrel of water, plunged his hands into the water. He pushed the ears down into the cold water and waited for them to bob back to the surface when he pushed them right back down again. After a minute or two, the ears of corn stopped bobbing back to the surface. Scott reached to the bottom of the barrel and pulled a couple of ears out and held them in his hands, testing them for heat. They were quite cool, so he pulled all the ears out of the water and placed them in a bucket just in time to receive the next batch of hot ears.

Once the ears were cool, they were carried into the kitchen of the farmhouse where the cutting crew were waiting to get to work. There, gathered around the kitchen table, were a half dozen people of various ages holding a number of different cutting utensils. Richard was sharpening a well-used knife with a steel as Caleb placed a wooden corn cutter across a medium metal bowel. (A corn cutter was a wooden trough that had a contoured knife and a un-sharpened flange attached to it. The knife would cut the kernel caps off and the steel flange would scrape the juicy corn off the cob. The removed kernels would fall through a slot in the corn cutter into the bowl.)

The corn was delivered to the kitchen table and everyone sprang into action. Two people were using corn cutters and everyone else used knives. They cut the kernels off the cobs and then scraped the remainder of the corn off the cob before tossing the cob into a nearby bucket. At their bowls and cutting boards filled up, each worked would empty their respective receptacles into large bowels. The corn was spooned from those bowls into labeled freezer bags and various tupperware containers. The corn was then stacked into boxes and crates and set aside to be divided up between the laborers later.

This process was repeated over and over throughout the day. The corn was blanched over the fire. Cooled in the galvanized can. Carried into the house where it was cut from the cob. The corn was bagged to be frozen and the cobs were carried to the barnyard to go the way of the husks. The entire process was an all day job with the exception of a short break for lunch which consisted of hot dogs, hamburgers, and of course, corn on the cob. Finally, just in time for chores, the last ear of corn was carved, cleaned, and discarded. Each participating family went home with an appropriate share of the fruits of the day's labor.

“Well,” Dale sighed with satisfaction. “I guess that'll hold us over for a bit.”