Drying sweet corn
Every year, we seed six
plantings of sweet corn, which provide near-continuous availability of
the treat over most of the summer. And every year, one of those
plantings gets away from us.
Mark
and I are such connoisseurs of sweet corn that we only eat the grain at
its peak. I start the water boiling at the same time I head out
to the garden to pick and shuck the ears, then I drop the corn in the
water and turn each ear once, removing as soon as the color changes from
pale to bright yellow, a process that takes mere seconds. The
result is corn so sweet, Lucy begs for the cobs, which she completely
consumes.
But if I miss that
peak-taste window and our corn starts to turn starchy...then Lucy, Mark,
and I all turn up our noses. Instead, I shuck the corn and put it
on our drying racks for winter animal treats. In the past, I've offered dried sweet corn to our chickens, but this year, I think the ears will go to the goats.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Nayan --- Mark's step mom gave us those racks last year. They were meant to be display racks in a store, but work great for vegetables!
Emily --- We did try corn roasted in the shuck a few times, but I wasn't impressed. Of course, that was at someone else's house with store-bought corn, which we no longer consider worth eating. (We're so spoiled.) Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!