Sweet corn

Some of you probably think you know what constitutes good sweet corn.  Some of you may even think you've eaten good sweet corn.  Most of you would be wrong.

Unless, that is, you've put the pot of water on to boil, gone out to the field & picked some ears of corn, stripped them on the way back to the house, and plunged them into the boiling water for exactly 5 minutes.

Fresh is hugely important for good sweet corn.  Maturity (ripeness) of the ears is also hugely important.  Most corn that I have purchased in the past 10 years -- from Farmers' Markets and farm stands both -- has been over-ripe.  If the kernels don't pop when you bite into them, if they aren't crisp, it's over-ripe.

And most hugely important of all: variety.  There are literally hundreds of sweet corn varieties.  The new varieties are called 'super sweets.'  And they are pretty much all to be avoided at any cost because they taste like candy, but not like corn.

Farmer Bill grows 2 main corn varieties.  The early variety is a bi-colored corn called Temptation.  It is sweet, but not super sweet, and the ears are on the small side.  But it is really very good.  The 2nd variety is a 'heritage' corn called Jubilee.  Jubilee is the corn Farmer Bill's father raised for the canning factory in the 1950s.  It is a traditional all-yellow corn with large slender ears, and a most excellent corn flavor, and it is what we try to freeze for our winter use.  But don't buy Jubilee and expect to keep it all week in your refrigerator.  Because it is an old variety it hasn't been modified to keep its sugars from turning to starch.  If you keep it more than 2 days it will be starchy and tough.  There is a 3rd variety, with a number for a name (it's escaping me right now, I'll add it in later).  It's a sweeter variety like Temptation.  And like Temptation it tastes great and will keep a bit longer in your fridge.

If you ever get the chance, eat a really good ear of sweet corn picked fresh from the field. 

Or maybe you shouldn't, because it will spoil you for ever eating restaurant or grocery store corn again... you'll only be able to eat sweet corn in July, August, and September for the rest of your life.

Oh, that rule doesn't apply to me

As I get older, I find myself getting crabbier about people who assume rules don't apply to them.  This week I'm particularly peeved about library patrons who think they should have special dispensation because, darn it, they're special.

Some examples.  A woman using the Internet has used up her first hour.  To get additional time, without logging off and starting over, she has to click a button every 10 minutes.  Very annoying, can't I just give her an additional hour?  No, that's not an option for me.  A young man who has come to the library to use the free Internet hasn't bothered to bring his library card although he knows he needs that to sign on, can't I just give him a guest pass?  No, not without some ID (this is our policy for very specific reasons that I won't go into here).  A patron has one of our 1-week, no renewal books checked out but hasn't finished it in 7 days.  Can't I extend the loan just 2 more days?  No, that's the point of a 1-week, no renewal loan period: no extensions.  The back-breaking straw.  A local teen center brings in 20 4th, 5th, and 6th graders without advance notice & wants them all signed up for our Teen Read summer program.  None of them are interested in the Children's program because the Teen program has the cool prizes this year.  None of them are interested in getting books as prizes -- they want the store gift cards, state fair tickets, candy, etc. that comes with the Teen program.  In the end we sign them all up for the Teen program.  But because I tell the group leader that we are making serious exceptions to the rules for them and that we'll need to hurry the process because they arrived only 15 minutes before closing & it's now only 5 minutes to close, I am called on the carpet as being unfriendly and unwelcoming.

For the past month, I have been telling our neighborhood 10 & 11 year olds no to signing up for the Teen program... Now I hear that the library is working on stronger collaborations with this center, and we can expect them to come in early next summer to get the kids signed up and reading.  That's great, I'm in favor of kids reading.  But if we're making exceptions for the center kids, I'm going to sign up my local neighborhood kids at ages 10 & 11; in fact, I'm going to sign up anyone who asks -- because they're special, too.  But mostly because the neighborhood kids are the ones I need to foster relationships with, so they are less likely to pose behavior problems in the library and more likely to pick up a book or magazine to read.

Over the 10+ years I've been at my current branch library, I have seen kids go from childhood to teen -- for better or worse -- to young adult.  One young man who was a regular breaker of rules is now in college and doing very well.  Another young man, who has the potential to go either way, seems to be moving in the 'right' direction. Girls who regularly tried to push our buttons now come in to get suggestions for books to read.  These patrons come back because the staff at my library has worked, hard, at being welcoming to everyone.  I am very proud of how well most of our staff does in dealing with the constant demands of our patrons.

Fame (still waiting for the accompanying fortune)

When Farmer Bill and I visit with family and friends we could easily spend the entire time talking about the farm.  I like to recite anecdotes about how I avoid farm work (by updating the website, blogging, working on the accounts, etc.).  Bill is generally happy to talk farming to anyone who will listen -- and especially to people who are genuinely interested.  And there seem to be a lot of people interested in what he does here on Straight River Farm.  I think that many family members like the fact that they still have ties to farming and talk about us to their friends.

Yesterday we celebrated a birthday with a group of family.  A friend of the birthday girl is one of Farmer Bill's biggest boosters.  She gets a delivery of our strawberries every year and says that every other strawberry -- home grown or not -- is compared to Farmer Bill's berries.  And most of them don't hold up well.

Nieces and nephews bring their children to SRF to experience picking strawberries.  And I think I put myself on the hook to host an apple-picking party with multiple children sometime in September.  We don't offer pick-your-own apples to the public, but I've had a couple of nephews who've come multiple years to pick Honeycrisp.  We didn't have any family come pick apples last year because our crop was so light that it got picked, packed, and sold in short order.  This year the crop is bigger and we should be able to provide a Sunday afternoon outing.  Favorite things are riding in the Gator and watching the apple sorter work.

It's really nice to have kids here, so show them how things grow, and let them experience the country up close and personal.  These days most children don't have any family members who farm; we like being the part of the family who does farm.

Raspberries

I made two batches of raspberry jam -- one black raspberry & one mixed red & purple -- today.  A couple of trays of raspberries were frozen for the winter.  And I made a peach-raspberry crisp for dessert.  Not bad for a Thursday.  I really like canning and putting up food.  I'm terrible at eating fresh fruit when it's around, but offer me anything baked with fruit inside & I'm happy to eat that instead of a meal.  I love dried apple slices in the winter... hmmm, I wonder how raspberries would be, dried?  Next batch of leftover raspberries go straight into the dehydrator.  Of course, now I've got to go dig it out of the storage room downstairs, and clean the trays so it's ready.

Would you be willing to live in the country?

Farmer Bill retired from teaching in 1999 at the age of 55.  He had been wanting to get out of teaching for a few years, but assumed that he'd have to teach until at least age 62 to get his pension.  But a chain of events put into place in 1970 made it possible for him to retire at 55 instead.

He tried several different part-time jobs after he retired.  None of them were a good fit for him.  More and more he began to talk about moving out of the suburbs and into the country.  He wanted to raise strawberries and apples, he said.  More strawberries than we had in our surburban farm (about 1/2 acre) and just a small orchard.  The strawberries he'd market through pick-your-own and various farmers' markets.  The apples would be sold at farmers' markets and wholesale.  Would I be willing to live in the country? he asked.  Show me your business plan, I replied.  And that was all the encouragement Farmer Bill needed.  I think he was online the next day looking for a real estate agent to help him find a farm.  I never did see a business plan, but was able to make one requirement stick.  He had to stay within a 60-minute drive of my job.  I wasn't willing to commute longer than that -- and if I'd known how high gas prices were going to be just a few years down the road, I might have tried to keep him even closer.

Farmer Bill often says it's no problem to finance a farming venture: Work 30 years at a job with a pension plan, save as much money as you can, marry someone willing to work off the farm for pay and on the farm (for no pay) when not at work, cash in your retirement savings, sell your house in an upturn in the market, borrow as much money as the banks will lend you, and you're all set.  That's what we did.  And now we get to live on this pretty little piece of land with a river running through it and wildlife traipsing across it.

Barn swallows

I do a lot of mowing on the farm.  We have a 6-foot wide zero-turn riding mower, a rotary cutter that gets pulled behind a tractor, and (when it works) a 32-inch riding mower.  Today I was mowing with the Toro -- the zero-turn.  Cleaning up the paths along the driveway, mowing the ditches alongside the township road, around the buildings, and in the orchard.  As I mowed, I gained a following of barn swallows.  If you've never seen barn swallows in action, come visit some sunny summer afternoon and I'll treat you.

Barn swallows have beautiful, almost fluourescent, blue backs.  Their undersides are cream to pale orange/rust, and their tails are deeply forked.  They eat insects, so they migrate south in the winter, and I look for them to return each spring.  When I mow, I disturb insects in the grass & weeds.  The insects fly up to escape the mower (often into my mouth, eyes, ears, and nose) & the barn swallows, who come flying when they hear the mower, swoop past me, now grazing the ground, now soaring into the sky, snatching insects out of the air.  It must be something of a smorgasbord for them.

Whenever I feed the swallows, I am reminded of the interconnectedness of creatures living on our planet.  I just finished reading a novel set during the time of the "Great Leap Forward" in China.  In the late 1950s there was a great famine in China, in large part because the government, run by city dwellers, didn't understand those interconnections.  Birds, especially sparrows, were killed by the millions so they wouldn't eat the plant seeds, or the grain in the fields.  But then the insects that the sparrows also ate didn't have a predator and ate the grain.  The government thought you could grow twice as much grain if you just planted twice as much seed, and that any crop would grow anywhere if the people just worked hard enough.  They didn't understand that there were reasons for the sparrows, and reasons for the traditional crops in a region.

So even though the barn swallows also like to try to build nests in our buildings (picture poop all over the floor), I welcome them back each spring.  On a summer evening they come out of the trees and swoop and dart through the gathering dusk... and I cheer them on because one of the insects they eat is the mosquito!