Sunday, August 3, 2014

Bumper Crop Of Sweet Corn


Many farmers judge their corn crop by their sweet corn crop.  By this measure, ours should be a good one!

I really wanted to use my free Ohio Soybean State Fair passes today as the hog and steer shows are finishing up and Matt and his FFA Chapter are working in the Lausche Building and Ohio FFA Center today.  My timing was off though and our sweet corn crop needed some major picking today.  We have called all the family and I hope to have all the harvestable ears picked by Monday.  The freezer is running over and we have tomatoes and peppers to freeze yet.

Ice had been creeping up the sides of our valuable chest freezer so we took time to defrost it before we added all this new sweet corn this morning.  You know what a miserable job it is to defrost a freezer but we caught it early and it wasn't bad at all.  It is full again at noon and everything is frozen except the new corn.  It will be in minutes.

We had a hard time planting the sweet corn back in April because Grandma and Grandpa can't bend over like they used to!  We called Madison and Brynn and they helped us plant four long rows fast and two bean rows besides.  They are built low to the ground with nimble fingers.  Thank you girls and I hope you enjoy the food you helped produce and it's feeding the whole family and friends!

I had a few earworms but nothing bad.  Insects are just not bad in our region this year, too much rain and cool weather!  I saw Mr. Fraley pushing Monsanto's GMO sweet corn on Twitter but I just don't see the need for it here.  I've never tasted anything better than the Avalon, Providence and Vision type sweet corns we raise and that covers, white, bi-color and yellow corn.  We tend to freeze yellow corn the most, that's the standard.

The Seneca Dancer we grew first year was awfully good and everyone who bought it called it Super Silver Queen or Improved Silver Queen.  Steve Groff pointed us to the ones I mentioned and I haven't found anything better except the varieties that replaced those standards.  I've never had much luck with Bt corn or sweet corn so I don't pay the extra money for it.

It's a great crop so today we say Thank You Lord for the good corn, the good crops and the great people you've sent us to eat it!

Ed Winkle

2 comments:

  1. Bending is hard even younger, your back is worth the cost of a wheel planter many times over, Ed! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I even built a one row 3 pt sweet corn planter, Chimel and didn't even bother to use it! It was ready to plant so we just went to planting it!

    ReplyDelete