While we are still in summer, the days are getting shorter. We used to be able get out into the fields at 5AM, when there was already plenty of morning light. Now, getting closer to 6AM, the sun is struggling to get up. There is so much to do on the farm and we try to pick things early in the morning while they are cool and crisp.

Corn picking is now almost a daily early morning event. If you wait until mid-day, you can struggle to get the corn stalk to give up the ear of corn. But pick it early, and the corn snaps off the stalk very easily when it is full of morning dew. Just dawn the rain coats and rain boots and get ready for wet corn leaves slapping you in the face. If you are not awake yet, you are definitely awake picking corn early in the morning. If you wait until later in the day, the once moist, pliable corn leaves that slapped you in the face, become long serrated knives ready to cut your arms with a hundred paper cuts. No one really likes to pick corn that much, but if you are going to pick, it pick it in the morning. I grew up picking corn early most summer mornings. There was often a crew of at least five of us high school kids picking, and a farmer on the tractor pulling the wagon. We still pick our corn this way, one ear at a time, firmly gripping the ear, pulling it down towards the earth that bore it, while at the same time twisting it. The faster you pull it down while twisting the better it will snap off. That early morning snap of the corn harvest is still heard here. Elsewhere in the US, the majority of the sweet corn now offered in supermarkets is mechanically picked with a machine that looks like a combine with rollers. These rollers flatten the stalk and push the ear off.. Certain varieties are grown a little tougher to withstand the roughness of the machine harvesters. I like to think our corn is happy to slap us up in the face with an early morning wet leaf as we twist and tickle the ear from it.

To sweet summertime corn