Not Uncle Corn

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The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye.1From Oh What A Beautiful Morning: Song by Gordon MacRae.
Not! But it’s grown in my back yard.
my 2023 corn

My first memory of corn is of an unpleasant experience. The cobs were cold, but cooked and eaten with little else. My consumption was followed by barfing in the car. There is more to that story, but this isn’t the time or place.

I like corn in taco salad, in soup, creamed, and in almost any preparation–even on veggie pizza. In spite of the experience before I was ten, I like corn on the cob the best.

As an early teen, we had ‘they will never miss a few ears’ picked from fields along the road. Of course, that was what we called field corn grown for animal feed, not the sweet corn destined for human consumption.

I anticipate having my own crop from this year steamed or boiled and served with butter and a little salt-and-pepper. And it looks like there will be enough to share.

Seeing my uncle’s corn fields in Minnesota after being in North Dakota where the fields were mostly winter wheat, was a nice2Nice seems generic, but my brain isn’t forming something more descriptive. experience. He was especially proud of his ‘for the fair’ field. It was enclosed by a stand of trees but harvestable.

I remember him standing on the seat of his John Deere tractor to reach the tassels. Organic wasn’t a common word, but all of the natural fertilizer gleaned from the milk cows made that field so. Well, as I remember the other fields got the same treatment, but he said he had a secret for growing his ‘fair’ corn.

During the season, every time he was in town, we got a good quantity of garden corn. We had c-o-t-c for several meals, and my mother stripped the cobs and canned the rest.

There is more to corn than meets an elephant’s eye, but that’s all for now.

Notes
  • 1
    From Oh What A Beautiful Morning: Song by Gordon MacRae.
  • 2
    Nice seems generic, but my brain isn’t forming something more descriptive.
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