At church on Sunday and by word of mouth from a good and friendly neighbor, we learned that there was fresh corn for the picking at the local Stake Farm (church area run farm) for just $1 a dozen and the farm is maybe two or three miles away....oh we were so there.
Monday morning came, today Labor Day and by 9am we were out the door and on our way to a fantastic family activity. I won't bore you with the details of not being able to find the farm or that when we finally did find the farm (really, there are several farms around here to confuse the inexperienced farm folk with), that no one was around to point us in the right direction. Luckily a gentleman from our ward pulled into the vast parking lot, obviously on corn errand from his wife, and had an idea on who to call for help. After a couple of minutes we were en rout to the other side of the farm to get to the designated sweet corn area.
Ok, so we made it.
"Every one out of the car and start picking." I had wonderful visions of corn frozen to keep us nourished all through the winter, corn for lunch and dinner steaming hot off of the cob, and mostly I felt like I was finally making my pioneer ancestors proud by partaking of the great bounty fresh from the earth. We picked over TEN dozen ears of corn and decided to make our way home....by way of TJ Maxx so I could pick up a corn cooking pot big enough for the task at hand.
We made it home and the clan started shucking the ears and I started boiling the water, two pans on the stove top. I called up another friend just to make sure I was doing everything right and she gave me some great advise; boil the water, put the corn into the water, cook for three minutes, put cooked corn into ice water to cool, cut corn from husk WITH AN ELECTRIC KNIFE (brilliant), put cut corn into freezer bags, and then put filled freezer bag into the freezer.
Got it!
As I started to cut the corn off of the first husk with the electric knife, I was surprised and how tough it was...it even gave my electric knife a run for it's money. No big deal though, we were doing the pioneer thing. After a couple of minutes I just couldn't help myself and had to have the first taste of this beautiful bounty.
What the.......
"Stevey come try this corn!" He tried it and thought nothing of it.
"This doesn't taste like 'sweet corn....don't you think it tastes like feed?"
"Yeah...that doesn't mean you can't eat it."
"I'm not going to eat 'feed' corn....we must have picked it from the wrong area!"
"It'll be just fine."
I quickly evaluated all that I knew to be good and worthy of this man I am lucky enough to call mine and decided to end the conversation on a neutral note, "WHATEVER!"
Have you ever tasted feed corn or as real farmers like to call it "field corn" they use in cattle feed and by the way it tastes like crap and is as tough as leather.
Well, the activity stopped there.
We decided to leave the house then and head down to the State Fair (again), because that is something we are good at. You know driving somewhere, walking around, and spending money....ooh I can just feel the admiration of those pioneers.
Hours later we decided to try it one more time at the Stake farm and it worked. Sweet corn stalks are shorter than field corn stalks, and the tops of the corn husks as well as the corn stalks themselves are whitish in color vs brown. By the end of the day we had EIGHT dozen ears of sweet corn picked, boiled, cut, bagged and frozen. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about harvesting sweet corn vs field corn....I AM an expert.
