My granddaddy always kept an impressive vegetable garden. It was with him, in his garden, where I first worked. Really worked. Sun-searing-your-shoulders, sweat-stinging-your eyes, dry-dusty-thick-throated work. I was seven or eight and my task was cropping collards. At the time I felt like one of the ancient Hebrews building the pyramids. In truth I probably only cropped enough collards for one dinner, if that much.
In addition to collards, Granddaddy grew all the other standards: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, watermelons, squash, snap beans, butter beans, field peas, etc. But the crop that stands out above the others in my mind is corn.
I think I remember corn first of all because every summer (usually in late June) there would be a “corn day” at my grandparents’ house. My mother would get an early-morning call from my grandmother summoning us all to come help put up corn. Usually, my mother recalls, the corn-day summons came without warning and without regard to other plans that might have been made for the day. As far as my grandmother was concerned, Almighty God Himself had ordained the day when the corn was ready and that was that.
When we got to their house there would be a heap of corn, fresh from the garden, piled somewhere in the yard. I recall the mounds being taller than I was. Several of us would sit outside with Granddaddy shucking the corn (I remember how proud I was when I was finally deemed old enough to use a knife to cut out the wormy bits) and the rest would be inside with Grandmother doing the cleaning, blanching, cutting, and bagging. At the end of the day there was a pile of husks almost as big as the original mound had been and we left with our year’s supply of corn.
My grandparents are gone now, but corn day is one of their traditions that lives on at our house. And it’s not just their tradition. Ask any rural Carolinian, especially a seasoned one, and they’ll tell you about their own corn days. My wife has blended the nuances of her family’s corn days with those of my family.
I, unlike my grandmother, had the courtesy to call my mother the night before to summon her to our corn day instead of waiting until dawn this morning. Her job now is a little different than it was back in the good old days. Instead of doing kitchen work, Mom’s task is to occupy our three small children while Helen and I work, a duty that is much more agreeable to her than what awaited her in my grandmother’s kitchen.
We don’t grow corn in our garden (we live in town on a quarter of an acre) but I know where to get the good stuff. Sullivan Farms, which is less than a mile from where I grew up, sells their delicious sweet corn for eighteen bucks a bushel. Even if I had the space, I doubt I could grow the corn for much less than that. Plus, their corn is grown in the same dirt that I got under my fingernails and behind my ears as a boy.
So I went out to Sullivan Farms first thing and picked up two bushels of corn (each bushel contains fifty to sixty ears), and by mid-morning I had my own little backyard mound. I set up camp in the shade of our little birch tree, with the compost pile just to my left. I sat in a rocking chair and shucked, putting the denuded ears into a cooler and throwing the husks onto the compost pile. In about forty-five minutes the shucking was done.
Helen painstakingly removes Every. Single. Silk.
Step two is the most tedious. I let Helen handle that. Each ear of corn is covered in tiny clear silks that grow at the ends of the ears and in the tight spaces between the rows of kernels. If I were putting the corn up just for myself, I’d just give each ear a quick scrub with a potato brush and move on. My wife, though, hates finding the silks when she’s eating the corn, so she goes through the process of removing every single little silk. After the ears have been scrubbed, she meticulously pores over each ear with a paring knife, carefully lifting each silk. She finished this step in just over three hours.
As she cleaned, I began the blanching, which involves boiling the ears in water for about five to seven minutes. Blanching the corn destroys enzymes which could cause the corn to change color, texture, or flavor when it’s frozen. I use a three gallon pot filled a little over halfway with water. I carefully add about ten ears to rapidly boiling water, wait for the water to return to a good rolling boil, and set the timer on my stove for five to six minutes. I use the timer just as a guide; if the ears stay in the pot a minute or three after the buzzer it won’t hurt anything.
The ears cool off in an ice bath.
Once the ears have been blanched, they must go into an ice bath to stop the cooking process. I went to the ice house this morning and bought forty pounds of ice ($4), and we use soda bottles that we’ve filled with water and frozen to help the ice last longer. It doesn’t take very long, maybe just a batch or two of ten hot ears, to start turning the ice into ice water. By the end of our day, there was only water with the frozen soda bottles, but that was sufficient to cool the last couple of batches.
Altogether, it took a couple of hours to cycle all the corn through the cleaning, blanching, and cooling processes. I counted the ears (105 in all), and selected 45 really pretty ears to freeze on the cob. We like to divide the ears in half—it’s easier for our kids to eat that way. I’ve tried couple of different methods, such as cutting the ears with various blades both before and after blanching, but the method that is easiest to me is to simply break the ears in half, just like you’d break a stick.
One hundred and five ears. Count ’em if you like.
Helen started bagging the corn-on-the-cob, wrapping the ears in freezer paper and packaging four ears in a quart-sized freezer bag. One day we hope to acquire a vacuum sealer, which will render the freezer paper unnecessary. We ended up with twenty-two bags of corn-on-the-cob.
As I cut the corn from the cob, I believe in pausing every so often for a little quality control.
While she was bagging, I started cutting the rest of the corn off the cob. I use a large, super-sharp serrated knife and a medium-sized basin. Every year my mother reminds me not to cut too close to the cob and I always roll my eyes and say “I know, I know, leave a little of the kernel on the cob to be scraped off later.” For whatever reason, she forgot to remind me this time and I forgot not to cut so close. The first couple of ears I scalped past the cob; forgive me in advance if you’re eating at my house the night we serve that corn. It only took a couple of ears, though, to bring everything back and I began to follow the warning that has, for my mother, become a part of our Corn Day tradition.
If you’re cutting it right, the knife will slide easily, with hardly any resistance at all, slicing off several neat rows of kernels that stay together even as they fall into the basin. If you find that you’re having to push or saw to get the knife through, you’re cutting too close. It will look like you’re leaving lots of corn on the cob, but don’t worry, it won’t go to waste. Once you’ve completely cut one ear, flip your knife around and scrape the cob with the flat side of the blade. You’ll be surprised at how efficiently this technique removes everything edible from the cob. When you’re finished, there will barely be enough on the cob to attract flies to your compost heap.
Elijah labels the bags.
It took me about forty-five minutes to remove the corn from the remaining sixty ears. While I was working on that, Helen finally found a job for our four-year-old son, who had been asking to help all day. Outfitted with a sharpie, his task was to write “Corn—14” on each of the quart bags. That kept him busy for a while; it takes him about the same of time to write corn—14 on a bag as it does for me to cut the kernels off one ear of corn.
At last every ear had been processed and we could finish bagging. We fill each bag about halfway with corn, add a splash of tap water, squeeze as much air out as possible and seal the bags. At last it was all bagged and ready for the freezer: 22 bags on-the-cob and 17 bags off. With the handful of bags still leftover from last year’s corn crop, we should be able to eat corn about once a week until next year’s corn is ready.
Our year’s supply.
When it’s time to cook it, we just dump the frozen block of corn into a small sauce pan, cover it, and heat it on medium-low until it’s thawed and warm, which usually takes about ten minutes. The frozen corn-on-the-cob can go on a hot grill for about ten or fifteen minutes, turning once, or into boiling water for five to seven minutes.
One final lesson from our most recent corn day experience. Once everything is bagged and in the freezer, you’ll feel proud—and exhausted. Resist the temptation to save the clean up for later; knock it out while you’re still on your feet. We had two coolers, two large pots, two basins, several dish towels, a couple of knives, and a potato brush to clean. It doesn’t seem like a lot now that I think about it, but it looked like a lot when it was piled in our sink and on our kitchen counter. Tired and hungry, Helen and I made the unspoken decision to save the clean up for later.
When we did get around to it, we discovered that the clean-up process had already been started—by sugar ants. It always amazes me how keen and efficient they are at mobilizing onto an opportunity for forage. They must have launched their offensive the moment we left the room, for by my estimate there were at least forty trillion ants working through the pile of dish towels. (And how, by the way, do they make use of something like sticky corn residue left on a towel?)
We did finally get everything cleaned and put away and the neighborhood ant population has, at least for a couple of hours, taken a sharp dive. And now that we had an abundance of fresh corn and it was time for dinner we sat down at the table, gave thanks, and feasted—on pizza.
grocery store. I have to unpack all our tailgating totes and take inventory. I make a list and check it thrice.
of choice back up to a large, shady, grassy area where the kids have plenty of room to run. And run they did – for four solid hours. They made friends, they threw rocks into the drainage ditch, they climbed trees, they tossed the football, and they just ran for the bare joy of running. I’m guessing they each burned about 10,000 calories before game time. Needless to say, they were completely out of gas after the game. I carried my daughter on my shoulders the entire way back to the truck after the game, and my son piggy-backed on his mother. They were asleep before we were out of Greenville.
CAKALAKA 
