The photos below are from a post I did way back in 2008 when I first started the Blind Pig. Our corn doesn’t look nearly as nice this year, but I’m wishing it did.
C hildren of the corn
O asis of green
R adiant sun
N ature at work
How about your corn hows it doing this summer?
Tipper
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Ed-we just leave our corn laying like it is too. Pap says you do more damage by trying to up right it. Sometimes the sunshine will lift it back up if its not too bad : )
Blind Pig The Acorn
Celebrating and Preserving the
Culture of Appalachia
http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com
No corn for us this year, and I’m wondering, with all the rain, if people who are growing it are having trouble with mold. I remember our corn getting an ugly lumpy gray/green/blueish mold at the base of all the cobs when I was a teen. You can’t plow it under, that just leave the mold remaining in the ground to infect the next year’s crop. We had to pull it all out by the roots, and I’m not sure, cause it’s a vague memory, but I think we had to burn it all in an open area where we didn’t grow food plants – acres and acres of it that Dad had worked hard to plant and nurture so he could sell it on his milk route to earn a little extra money. Such is life on a farm, one just never knows!
God bless.
RB
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Just a little while ago I went out to harvest some cucumbers (of which I have a plenty, on just three hills) and looked at my four short rows of corn. The wind the other day had blown about half of it down but the other half was doing fine. The upright stalks were tosseling proudly with platinum blonde haired ears erupting below.
This is the first year since Dusty came along that I have had a garden. He had science and biology classes in school but this is his first year of firsthand experience with growing what he needs to sustain himself. I am getting older and he came along late, so I worry about what will happen when I am not here to watch over him. To look at him you would think he could survive just fine under any circumstance but like most his age, he hasn’t a clue how life really works.
He asked me if we could stand the fallen corn plants back up. I didn’t know. I told him I thought it would be better to leave them to grow just as they are. But I didn’t know. Do you? I staked my tomatoes this year, but my corn? It’s tough when a young person, just starting out, asks a question and you don’t know the answer.
I must admit, the phrase “Children of the Corn” gave me the shivers. That is one spooky movie. I don’t usually go in for that sort of show but my family rented in for me after major surgery about 25 years ago, set it to running, and left. I was just home from the hospital and not allowed to walk without assistance if at all – luckily (I think) I slept through much of it but the parts I saw really creeped me out!
Too bad – it should be a good title that brings up warm memories. Maybe you could write a book and give the phrase new meaning! Perhaps a photo book. . . .
My Silver Queen is 6 ft. plus tasseling beautifully, I’m looking forward to Roasting Ears in a couple to three weeks.
Tipper,
We don’t have room for corn in our raised beds. We did grow corn in years past in the big garden. It was a hassel keeping the raccoons and deer away from it so we just quit. There are so many that sold corn around here and had beautiful fields of it near the lakes and rivers that we felt that our contribution of money for their corn was cheaper and easier for us. Whew!
That said, I think putting on the pot of water to boil and going after you “years” of corn, shucking on the way back to the kitchen, dropping them in the pot is always the best tasting corn on the cob there is!
We have eaten corn several times from the Farmers market and store this year of course home grown and not got a bad ear at all!
In fact that is what we are having for supper! Along with maybe some fresh okra and sliced “maters” from the garden!
Thanks Tipper,
PS….I hope your corn makes! Nothing like fresh corn!
We didn’t plant corn but the corn crop down in the valley looks to be the best in years, if the rain will just hold and not flood again, last year they had a good beginning and a bad end, rain hit just right and then just stopped, most of it burned up in the field. Hopefully not that way this year, should be a bumper crop.. “Children of he corn” funny you should add that, a guy I work with hates that movie, he couldn’t watch it, just mention it to him he shakes all over..
Tipper,
Those 3 1/2 weeks we had without
any nurturing sunshine ’bout did
in my garden. I got some stuff but
it don’t even compare with past
crops. The corn ain’t tall like it
usually is, but it looks nice and
I recon it’ll be OK. (if the coons
and crows can be kept at bay) This
morning I noticed the blackberries
and tomorrow morning I’ll mix with
the chiggers awhile…Ken
We get our corn at the grocery, as we don’t have room for corn. The deer eat most everything else. Mrs. Wanda has a small planter on the front porch with herbs and hot peppers growing. So far, the critters have left that alone. We also have taro growing in large pots. Taro leaves are inedible, at least raw, so those are doing well. They require a growing season of about 15 months, so they won’t be very mature by autumn. We bought those at a local oriental market, and could have cooked the roots as they were, but we hope they multiply so we can replant some next spring. They really need to be a lot further south than Ohio.
Sorry to say, the only plants of corn I find have been planted by my squirrel (animal) friends. I feed them a cob here and there and it is fun to watch them sit in their little chair and munch away. (Yes, I have a special metal chair that I attach the corn cob to.) I must say that I liked using the letters of corn to write a type of poetry. I use to do that at the beginning of each school year as a creative writing exercise, but the students had to use their official legal name, not a nickname. It opened the doors to me so I could learn a bit about each child. This was middle school, so I had at least one hundred sixty children a day.
I haven’t seen corn this high since I was picking corn as a teenager. I was 5’11” then and it really brought home the Rogers and Hammerstein’s lyrics “corn is as high as an elephant’s eye”. The tops of those stalks of my youth were 1 to 2 feet above my head.
My daughter has had several good crops of corn in her garden in N. Texas and it usually tops her 6’2″ self.
Around here, instead of sweet corn, the farmers mostly grow feed corn or corn for bio-fuel (the reason corn products such as tortillas are so much more expensive these days!) and it is grown for mechanical harvesting – only grows as high as my shortened self’s waist!
My Dad gave one of my son’s my corn picking/husking glove. Have you seen one of those? Have any of your readers used them?
I started to close with “another post bringing fond memories” – then I remembered how itchy I was at the end of the day no matter how many layers of clothes I could tolerate in the South Texas early fall heat! (We picked down there in September/October.)
Anyway, there were also good memories: the smell of the field; the conversation as we picked; and, of course, hot buttered corn on the cob!
Thanks for the memories.
My friend’s corn is about 6 feet tall but no tassels and no ears. I guess it’s this wet weather.
All I can say is every ear of my corn is in the belly of some stinkin’!@#$% deer somewhere here on the farm. Just wait till this fall when I can legally get revenge…It looks like a war zone where a few of the stalks still stand. The $15 jar of Repels-All does not work!
Darn! I forgot to add that I saw that article and thought of you!!
The world capital for chenille bedspreads – Appalachian History
http://www.appalachianhistory.net
Beautiful photo’s, but no corn growing here.
The corn in North Alabama is the best it has been in years, thanks to the abundant rainfall. I’ve had lots of corn-on-the-cob! Love your photography.
Your corn sure did look great that year. I have quit the corn altogether. We have had a problem with crows in the area, and they stalked my corn. Between the squirrels, deer, crows, and worms, I gave up on the corn. So far able to plant all the other veggies. Good luck with your garden this year, Tipper.