Corn season brings fond memories

WESTERN PRODUCER — The generosity of a neighbour at harvest time meant this farm family was able to gather up all the cobs they could eat

By late autumn I had eaten my fill of toasted tomato sandwiches and bowls of cucumbers chopped up with sour cream and onions, but I never got enough corn on the cob, and so I looked forward to the yearly corn feed.

It seemed to me that it always happened rather spontaneously. About the time of the harvest moon, our congenial neighbour would stop us along the road to town to say his large field of corn was about ready.

“If you want to steal some, I’ll be glad to look the other way.”

That night my brother and his teenage friends would rustle up a few gunny sacks and take him at his word, while Mom stoked up the wood fire in the kitchen stove and started heating water in the big copper wash boiler.

As we all sat on the back step in the moonlight husking piles of corn, the Collie dog was kept busy greeting everybody who dropped by, some on bicycles, some walking, some in cars. Before long the house was crowded with visitors jostling one another for space at the big dining room table. The saltshakers were filled, the butter cut into squares and steaming platters of fresh corn on the cob were placed at either end of the table.

Juice squirted from the plump kernels as people bit into the feast. There was much good-natured bantering as to who could eat the most corn. Tradition had it that the person who could eat his own length in corn cobs was the winner, so tall visitors were especially singled out for attention.

The empty corn cobs were piled in front of each plate for the final tally. I don’t recall anyone ever meeting the challenge, but competitors found ingenious ways to distract their rivals in order to steal one or two of their cobs.

The next morning it was my job to take the empty corn cobs to the pigs. They sat on their haunches and indulged, cracking the cobs in their powerful jaws and grunting from the pure pleasure of the experience.

It was a feeling with which I could identify.

Paying premium price for a few wilted cobs from today’s supermarket seems a long way from those childhood days when a neighbour offered us all we could eat for free. And instead of Mom’s boiler, a friend tells me she cooks corn in its husk using her microwave.

Somehow the thought of nuking a stray corn borer doesn’t appeal to me.

I prefer to drive to the country in the autumn and find a roadside stand where freckle-faced boys sell bags bulging with freshly picked corn. I take some home and husk it, while the water comes to a boil in my big aluminum pot and family members drop by.

Soon a plume of steam is fragrant with the aroma of sweet corn. As the family gathers around the table, they agree with me that feasting on those golden cobs drenched in melted butter is about as close to eating manna as we will ever get.