Corn Day

   I can't believe that I'm blogging about a day as mundane as corn day, but this year it was a surprisingly good year!  I usually dread corn day.  Normally the sun is beating down and it's the hottest day of the year.  I do not look forward to the mess and the tracking in and out of people into my house.

Will plan all future corn days around this little machine's availability!

   This year was refreshingly different!  We used to have a hired man whose family did corn with us.  His immediate family (3 young boys), his parents, his sister who usually brought along a few kids, and sometimes a great aunt.  That's a lot of people.  It took HUGE amounts of corn to feed all those people for the winter.  We even did some for another sister of his who lives a state away.  Alas, but our good hired man moved west!  We miss him greatly.  He was a wonderful man who did good work and was like family to us.  However, since there weren't as many people, we didn't have to do as much corn, and there weren't as many people tracking in and out of my house.  This year there were 5 adults and two little helper girls.  MUCH less of a circus.  Although, if we could have our hired man back, I'd gladly put up with the circus for a day.

   My farmer and his Dad picked the corn the evening before.  We got up early the next day and started husking it.

 We rented a machine that took the silks off and washed the corn at the same time.  This saved us HOURS of work!  I highly recommend this nifty little contraption.  You put the cobs in one end and they come out the other clean and ready to work with.  Which is, as my niece would say, "Awesome sauce."

    This little girl in the purple coat, was a good helper!  She handed Grandpa corn so that he wouldn't have to bend over.  She stuck with it until we were done.  I was proud of her!  She was even sick and running a fever that was only controlled by occasional doses of Advil.  She was a trooper!  When they were done with that job, Grandpa gave her a hug and a kiss which made a big impression on her.  She still talks about, "Helping Grandpa's back."  My baby was a pretty good helper too, although her attention span wasn't quite as long.

   My hubby's Grandma came out to help us.  She's a spry little lady!  She is an amazing cook.  (That has nothing to do with my blog post, but I thought I'd just mention that!)  Notice the large amount of corn!  I don't think that was all of it either.  It was way more than we needed, but it's always nice to have a bit extra!

Our sick, but happy girl.  What a gift she is!

My father-in-law manning the kettle.

  Then it's into the kettle to be blanched.  We have this awesome burner system that allows us to cook it outside.  This is great because the mess is outside and not in my kitchen, and the hot is outside and not in my kitchen!

   The next stop after being cooked is into our garage.  We set up tables to cut the corn off the cob.  But first the hot corn is cooled in big vats of ice cold water.  You can see the tubs in the back round of this picture.  The water is so cold that you can't keep your hand in there for more than a few seconds at a time.  The Arctic Circle springs to mind.

   One of the secrets of making corn day go quickly and with much less work are the handy dandy corn cutters we use.  You can see them in the picture above.  It's a circle blade that is expandable so that it will fit any size cob.  There are metal handles attached to the blade.  We cut out square blocks of wood, varnished the snoot out of them and drove a nail up through the bottom.  These are the best corn cutters to ever be invented!  You stab the cob on the nail, push it down to the block of wood, put your cutter on top and push down... and voila!  The whole cob is stripped at once!  (For those of you who are wondering, the cutters can be bought at Wal-Mart, online or at some farm stores.  The Wal-Mart ones have been known to be cheaply made.  Go figure.)

   My girl ended up with two minor wounds when she tried to help cut the corn off.  She gave up after the second band-aid.  I would have too!

   I don't have any pictures of "Yours Truly" bagging the corn, but I was there and I did work.  My job was cutting, bagging, playing nurse, running bagged corn to the house to put in the freezer, dispensing refreshing drinks, threatening dark things to my father-in-law who enjoyed splashing me with the Arctic water, and holding tired little people who needed a bed.

   You wanna know the best part about the whole day?

   It was COOL!!!!!   It barely got to 75 degrees!  That's why my daughter was wearing a jacket in July.  It felt like autumn weather.  It was wonderful!  God couldn't have given us a better day to do corn.  

   Anyway, it's over until next year!  Praise. The. Lord.