Corn, mmmmm good!
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Corn has always been an important part of our diet — whether we were in the country or city-bound.
Because we're a gardening family, we KNEW the difference between store-bought corn and corn we'd lovingly frozen ourselves and stored in the freezer.
We KNEW the difference between corn that came fresh from the garden and directly into a steaming hot kettle of water and corn that is picked and shipped and doused with water and chemicals to keep it semi-fresh and refrigerated until finally it appears in the local grocery.
There was no comparison. And even though we were amazed at corn appearing in the grocery store in February, we knew that it came from Mexico or El Salvador and had experienced a long an arduous journey and no way would we be even tempted to buy it and put it on our table.
Even with all the genetic manipulations and scientific attempts to make the corn sweeter and sweeter so that we'd be tricked into believing it was fresh when it wasn't, we — who had the farmer's blood in our veins — KNEW the difference.
Of course, coming to Kansas — corn country — immediately our hearts turned toward home-grown corn and the deliciousness of taking it straight from the garden into our mouths in nothing more than five minutes (which included shucking time). Mmmm good!
However, and there's always one of those, it just seemed that my little backyard garden couldn't support enough corn to even whet our appetite. So my heart yearned for more!
Enter Tooltime Tim, on his white horse, "So how much corn do you want to plant?" he asks. "Lots!" came the answer. He pondered that a minute and then said, "Next year, we'll plow up my corral and you can plant corn up there!"
Well, THIS is "next year." You remember that I told you that we brought Dad's tractor here from Oregon and it has the neatest tiller-assembly imaginable.
Early this spring, Tooltime Tim was showing me how to run that tractor and tiller. As we went back and forth in the field, he'd hollar, "How much more do you want tilled up?" And I'd say, "MORE!" Then I looked at this field we'd groomed for corn — it was HUGE! How was I going to plant it? Tim had made it clear, "I'll get it ready — you take care of it!" That was a deal.
"We need a two-row planter," said Tim. And he started to hunt for one abandoned in a field, stashed with the old unused equipment in some farmers yard — anywhere — until he found one. We bought it, brought it home, and triumphantly planted the first 10 rows of corn. And we waited. Oooops, we hadn't set the equipment right and instead of planting a precious seed every six inches it was planting them about a yard apart. "We might as well start over," says Triple T. So we did.
What a triumphant day when that corn came up! Of course, so did the weeds and you do remember how big we made that field. Jessica and I have been out with the hoe chopping bindweed and sunflowers, etc. and tenderly nurturing the corn.
As I chopped, I remembered the stories Mom told about having to go out with her siblings and chop weeds on a hot day in the field. They got smart and hooked up the old horse to the buggy and took turns sitting in back and chopping. "It worked pretty slick," Mom said, "Until the hoe got caught in the buggy wheel." They were back to walking.
"We need a two- or four-row cultivator," proclaims the tool man. We're looking. "How much are you going to have invested in this corn before it ever hits the plate?" my sister wants to know. "You'd be better off going to Lehigh and buying your fresh corn," she chides.
But it's another day in the country and surely growing your own corn is a country tradition worth keeping even if it isn't cost-effective. And as we watch the seedlings emerge, I dream of that first hot roasting ear!
