What’s up with the corn? Find out below after this one update.
It looks like they are just about done with repaving the road. I’m surprised how quickly they got it done after experiencing other road work taking months or years. Maybe we just know how to build roads out here in the country.
Farm News
Though in past newsletters I discussed the overabundance of corn this season, I feel I need to discuss another corn issue that I discovered this past weekend. We had a small problem with our sweet corn this past week that may have affected the corn you received. To help you understand what transpired I must first provide a quick overview of sweet corn reproduction. This is probably review for some long term members.
Sweet corn propagates sexually. Don’t worry, I’ll keep this PG for the young folks reading the newsletter. Sexual propagation involves the union of the pollen with the egg to produce a seed. With corn, the seed is the part you eat. Corn is wind pollinated. Not much unlike young adults, a mere breeze is all it takes for corn to start spreading its pollen around. The corn’s pollen comes from the corn’s male part — the tassel — which again similar to young men is the sticky-uppy thing found on top of the corn stalk. Now unlike mammals, corn stalks also have female parts. These are the silks that are found hanging out on the side of the corn stalk — they are also frequently found stuck in your teeth after you’ve eaten the corn. To propagate corn the pollen from the sticky-uppy part drifts down to the side-hanging silk part and thus a corn seed is born. The more silks that are pollinated the more seeds on your corn cob.
So far so good? So what happened to some of our corn? Well, the silky female part of some corn stalks spent too much time getting ready for the big dance and arrived later than planned. Though there was still some pollen producing male parts in the sweet corn patch shedding some sweet corn pollen, by the time these female parts got their act together the male pollen producing parts of the ornamental corn down the road a piece started producing its pollen. And guess what happened? That’s right, the ornamental corn pollinated the sweet corn; not what we intended.
How can you tell if you got some cross-pollinated corn? First if you see kernels that are not white or yellow (this particular corn is bi-colored) but more likely purple or light purple you have cross-pollinated sweet corn. The other way to tell is to taste it. It is very starchy and not all that delicious. Now recall that each of the silks produces a seed or kernel of corn. Depending on how many of the seeds were cross pollinated will determine the palatability of that ear of corn. One or two cross pollinated kernels will probably not be noticed. However more than a few might make the corn too starchy to enjoy.
How did this happen this year and not other years? Well, let me tell you. We plant four different varieties of sweet corn so that we get sweet corn over a four to six week period. This spring we rearranged the planting dates of the different varieties to spread out the sweet corn harvest period more than in past years where we had overlapping varieties and were overwhelmed with sweet corn. This rearranging didn’t quite work out. Not only were we still overwhelmed with sweet corn during certain weeks this season but now the sweet corn’s reproduction of the fourth planting overlapped with the ornamental corn’s. What do they say about best-laid plans? So if you had some unpalatable sweet corn we apologize and hope that you had sufficient palatable corn to enjoy.
What will we have this week?
Well the rest of the potentially cross-pollinated sweet corn. More tomatoes than you could ever imagine (yes more than last week). An equally unmanageable amount of cherry tomatoes. Onions, cucumbers (they are winding down), some zucchini/summer squash (also winding down), peppers, some eggplants, lots of beans, some tomatillos, some potatoes (if we have time and dry weather we’ll have more potatoes), some cabbage, some beets, some carrots and some other things I may be forgetting. We’ll also have hot peppers! Just a reminder for drop-site members: if you want hotter than jalapeno peppers please let me know and we can send you the hotter ones. Indicate how how you want them on a 1-5 scale with 5 being the hottest.
I believe only FlowerShare this week.
Produce Usage Ideas
This past Saturday we froze a bunch of the sweet corn. If you have the time it is a great way to use up a lot of sweet corn. To freeze bring a pot of water to boiling. Add an appropriate number of ears of corn that fits comfortably in the pot. Cook for three minutes. Remove and let cool. Repeat until you are done with the corn. Once cool, get out your bundt pan (What?), balance a cob on the center hole and with a sharp knife cut the kernels off the cob into the pan. Package in freezer bags in appropriate size portions (we went with two cups per bag).
Now instead of freezing all this sweet corn make Corn Chowder with some of it! Here is the recipe I created by merging all the recipes I found on the internet.
Ingredients:
2 c sweet corn (approximately 8 ears of corn)
5 strips of bacon cut into pieces
1 onion chopped
2 T butter
2 cloves garlic crushed
1 lb potatoes cubed
1 qt chicken stock
1 t thyme
2 heaping T of chopped chives
1 red pepper chopped
1/2 c milk
1 T corn starch
Cook bacon in dutch oven until crisp. Drain bacon retaining about a T of fat in the pot. Add onion and butter, cook until onion is soft. Add garlic cook for 1 minute. Add stock, corn, thyme, half the chives and potatoes. Cook until potatoes are soft, about 15 minutes. Add pepper. Whisk corn starch into milk and add to hot soup while whisking. Heat through. Serve with additional chives as garnish. You can substitute water for chicken stock but may need to add salt. Use heavy cream or half-and-half instead of milk for a creamier soup.
Speaking of soup, here is a Gazpacho recipe member Jeni shared on the Facebook Forum. I haven’t tried it but it looks great, uses tomatoes which we have a lot of, and a couple of other veggies from this week’s share.
Speaking of using a lot of this week’s veggies, here is another recipe shared by member Deborah who claims she makes this often and it freezes well: Roasted Tomato Sauce. She claims you can deviate from this recipe and add other ingredients like bell peppers and tomatillos. Not following directions sounds a bit wild to me. However with the cooler weather it might be nice to turn on the oven!
That is all for this week. As always, let me know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions (especially for newletters as I am running out of ideas), jokes, or brain teasers.