Fresh Earth Farms - CSA

I’m All Ears

sweet cornLabor Day is just another day here at the farm.  Veggies don’t celebrate labor.  So we are open our usual hours and our deliveries occur at the usual times (except for Woodbury being a bit late).  And more importantly, this is a great day to volunteer on the farm.  We can find activities for all ages and physical abilities.  If you just like to sit around and gab we can have you cut garlic.  If you like to crawl around in the dirt we can dig potatoes.  If you like splashing in the water you can wash produce.  So do not hesitate to take advantage of your day off by farming.

We are good with egg cartons so we don’t need any more at this time.  We could use more pint clamshells though so continue to bring them our way.

As I was passing the 1000 ear threshold during my recent sweet corn harvest I was reminded of how farming has changed the vernacular of the English language.  Maybe it is more how farming has added to the lexicon of the English language.  Or is it an idiom or a proverb I was reminded of.  Nonetheless, walking through a field of corn is like walking through a field of paper, each sheet reaching out to mark its victim with the slightest little score.  No one cut results in any pain but after a couple of hours of cuts your arms start to sting a little.  Then throw in the sweat that refuses to evaporate due to the 70+ degree dew points and the cuts start to burn a little.  Multiply it by the thousands of stalks walked passed and you begin to realize the true meaning of the phrase “death by a thousand cuts”.  Of course the meaning of this phrase has morphed to mean the slow demise from small, incremental, negative steps but it originated in the pre-mechanization era of farming when people and not machines harvested the sweet corn.

Usually we harvest as much corn as we need for that day’s shares.  That way our members get fresh, just picked sweet corn.  The closer to just picked you get the corn, the sweeter it will be.  After picking, the corn’s sugars start converting into starches.  So getting just picked corn makes for the sweetest sweet corn.

Unfortunately as the corn still on the stalk matures past a certain point it starts to become less tasty.  It loses its texture and becomes mushy.  There comes a point where storing it in the cooler keeps the corn sweeter and more palatable than leaving it on the plant to become over- mature.  And our last planting of sweet corn was creeping up to that point.  So we decided we had to harvest it all and give it out in great quantities so our members could enjoy it while it was still enjoyable.

One of our strategies is for the third planting of sweet corn to be a type that not only has the highest sugar content but also has a slow sugar to starch conversion rate.  Plus its texture doesn’t degrade much even when frozen.  So by harvesting it earlier than the day of pick-up we sacrifice very little of its taste and texture.  In fact, by not letting it continue to mature on the plant we save the corn from certain degradation.

Our plan was to harvest all the remaining corn on Thursday afternoon.  Thursdays are good days for us to do larger projects since we don’t have pick-ups in the afternoons.  So without knowing how much corn we would actually harvest we started pulling ears and keeping count.  After getting through a couple rows we projected we’d have somewhere around 3000 ears of corn!  That’s a lot of corn for a CSA our size.  It was also the most we ever got out of one planting of corn.  Apparently everything went right with this planting.

Anyway, after calculating the amount of corn and using the number of shares we determined each share would get somewhere around a lot of corn.  The next question was, “Do we give it out all at once or do we store it and give it out over two weeks?”  The answer became clear as we completely filled our walk-in cooler with corn: “Give it out now!”  So that is why you got (or will shortly be getting) so much corn this past week (for Friday and Monday members) or this week (for Wednesday and Thursday members).  And as the saying goes, too much corn is better than none.

What will we have this week?  Great question.  I wish I knew the answer.  We will have tomatoes.  We will have cherry tomatoes.  Also tomatillos, beans, onions and carrots.  There are still eggplants though their production is waning.  The summer squash will wind down by the end of this week.  We’ll try to dig more potatoes.  If we have time to process garlic we will give some out this week.  We’ll also take a look at the watermelons.  Hopefully the crows left us a few.  Wednesday and Thursday will get their remaining sweet corn.  We should have some sweet peppers as well.  I’m not sure what else we’ll have but we will certainly have it.

No eggs, cheese, fruit, meat or coffeeSeafood and salmon will be available Friday during our regular pick-up hours.

Next week’ FruitShare will be Colorado Peaches.  If anyone would like to order some please let me know ASAP.  The price is $47 for 10 lb box and $82 for a 20 lb box.

A corn stalk walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Wanna hear a good joke?” The corn stalk says, “I’m all ears!”

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