“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

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Okay, so this isn’t really a eulogy, but it is a commemoration of sorts…of harvest! What do you do with wheelbarrows full of fresh corn on the cob? Here we eat steamed corn right off the cob, share with our neighbors, make corn fritters, black bean and corn salsa, and then Google more recipes for corn like sautéing it with a few spices, zucchini and summer squash (it was really good!). Fresh corn only lasts so long, so when you have more than you can eat immediately you can freeze some for later – this way you can enjoy fresh corn all year long. Freezing corn retains the flavor, nutrients and results in fresher-tasting corn than the canned variety.

This was our first year that we had enough corn to freeze, so we had to learn from our resident corn harvesting/preserving pro. My husband had years of experience on a much larger scale from growing up with a large garden in Connecticut. He had us set up in stations of blanching, kernel cutting, cob scraping and bagging. The whole process is a very sticky mess, but it ends with bags of creamy corn ready for the freezer. For those of you that are interested I have included the preparing and freezing process in the corn vittles page here.

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My husband has many memories of long summer days of processing corn. They filled freezers full of corn each summer to feast on all year long. One of my favorite corn memories of his was shared at his Uncle Davy’s memorial this past March. I will cut and paste here, because his recollection and writing far surpass what I would bring to the table:

“In the many years I spent with Uncle Davy, the only time I remember an objection to further labor come out of his mouth was the time he was unwittingly caught up in a battle of the wills he did not realize was at play. I had just gotten home from a week away at AWANA camp, (during prime Summer garden time).  When I awoke on Saturday morning, my mother decided we would redeem the time that day by doing corn, (possibly to keep the day from going to weevils)…okay, that might be a stretch…regardless – my idea of “redeeming the time” that day looked a lot like free time.  Mom won the initial skirmish and I headed out to the corn patch with a wheelbarrow and proceeded to pick…and pick…and pick…until there was not a ripe ear left in the garden.  Uncle Davy came out as usual and joined the crew husking corn – this went on all afternoon and into the evening, until finally the last ear was free of husk.  But of course…corn processing doesn’t end there….the corn has to be blanched, and cut off the cob, and the cobs scraped, and then bagged for the freezer.

I had already made my bed and was content to lie in it.  Mom had rallied her seemingly infinite reserve of will power and had committed to seeing the battle through to its sticky end.  Uncle Davy, on the other hand, had come to the realization that he was an unwitting participant in a silent battle not of his choosing.  By the time midnight rolled around, feeling himself to be collateral damage and an unsuspecting, innocent victim of this “cold war”, he announced to mom that he was going to bed!  Mom, (as she is wont to do), promptly reminded him of his character and coerced/guilted him into continuing on with the task at hand, until it was completed.  It was somewhere between 2 & 3 in the morning when we finished up that “day” and we were all ready for bed at that point!…though there was no admission of defeat by either my mother or my teenage self. ”

Another memory we enjoyed hearing was of Uncle Joel as a child grossing out a girl by eating corn worms in front of her. They all claimed they tasted like corn, so we were wondering if that was really true. I’ll end this post with a video of my son’s experience.