Sweet Corn

Oh, the joy, of biting into a hot, buttered and salted ear of summer sweet corn, one that was picked earlier that same day so its sugar content was still at its highest, is beyond proper words! How well I remember early August days on the farm when my Dad would walk his rows of corn discarding all but the biggest and blemish-free ears to bring in for lunch and then again for supper. I am not exaggerating when I say that Dad's ears of corn were so long one ear would extend beyond the edges of a dinner plate and so round that when you grasped one your fingers and thumb would not touch! Dad grew a large patch of corn for three reasons. The first and most logical reason was to have LOTS of corn for his family to eat and can, not one of my favorite chores growing up. How well I remember waking up on a summer morning smelling corn being blanched and knowing that day would be preoccupied with husking, blanching, cutting and canning corn. As a teenager this activity was low on my summer fun list.
The second reason Dad grew an abundance of corn was because his sweet corn "fame" was well known in the area so he provided many friends with bags of corn to eat and fill their cellars for winter. Finally, Dad knew he had to have many rows of this delicious vegetable because he would be sharing it with the "bandits"! Raccoons love sweet corn, as much or more than we do. For years Dad tried to battle with them using barbed wire, radio noise, flash lights, even late night stalking with BB guns. Nothing could deter these persistent pests. So in time he just gave up and planted more corn. From then on there was always enough to go around. Ha!
Each summer I continue to look for and purchase sweet corn wherever we are during the months of July and August. This year we bought and ate North Carolina corn. It does not measure up to Iowa corn and definitely does not meet my Dad's standards but its sweet corn. We ate it and enjoyed, remembering my Dad and a time when his corn was "King"!


Christian enjoying his first ear of sweet corn.