Sweet Success

 
I am a farmer's daughter...a farmer who grew sweet corn, among other things.  I have many memories of moving irrigation pipe through the maybe 6 foot tall corn field, early in the mornings. The corn would be wet and the sharp-edged leaves would slap me in the face. 


Imagine walking through a field of this at about
5 a.m.  It is not one of my most pleasant childhood memories.  But we had lots of fresh corn on the cob to eat, which I love.





So an entire bed of our garden each year is devoted to sweet corn.  Paul grew it before I got here but the expectations were high when I started planting the sweet corn, given my heritage and all.  Well, the first year was a disaster.  I'm not sure why, but the corn patch was spotty at best and, maybe, produced a couple of ears.  When my Dad saw it, he said (kidding) he couldn't believe I was his daughter.  Thus the challenge was on.  I found corn seed that was supposed to grow in areas with a shorter growing season (that's us).  No offense to my Dad, but everything will grow in the Willamette Valley! 

The next year was a little better but not much.  The third year the patch looked really good and the ears were starting to look like they were getting ripe when a flock of blackbirds came in and decimated the entire patch in an afternoon.  I was so mad I could have spit nails.

The next season, quail came in and ate the little corn sprouts as they poked up through the soil.  I replanted and put bird netting over the entire bed until the corn got tall enough to fend for itself but it didn't really do well after that.

Last year, I covered the bed before the sprouts came up and I covered it again to ward off the blackbirds.  But in all my efforts to keep the birds out, I neglected to check the corn often enough.  We had ears but they were really over-ripe, in my opinion anyway.  

 
Now this year it appears as though I may have  finally succeeded in growing a nice patch of corn. 










Today I picked the first ears and they look perfect. 

There are many ways to eat corn but nothing is better than picking an ear, shucking it and dropping it in a pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes.  Slather it with butter and salt and take a bite.  Pure heaven for this farmer's daughter.  I think, this year, Dad would be proud.