First Corn Harvest and Other Happenings Around the Homestead

We have been selectively harvesting corn from our first planting to eat everynight and it finally got to the point where we had to harvest and can. After purchasing a pressure canner, we harvested 140 ears from the first planting and almost all of them were fully poolinated with sweet full ears which was really gratifying as we have never grown corn before and our knowlege all comes from books and the Internet. Several neighbors have had a poor corn harvest and incompletely pollinated ears (they will be missing rows, the kernals are small etc) so I think they way we planted 8 rows deep and in rows about 50 feet long helped. We also didnt use any fertilizer beyond organic compost and some composed horse manure nor did we use any pesticides so we ended up with horn worm on the ends of most of the ears but we just cut those parts off. We decided early on we didnt want to use roundup or any type of weed killer and we sure didnt want to spend all day weeding so we layed old hay between the rows and we intensively planted closer than what was recommended (the rows were just wide enough for me to get a push mower through to keep some of the weeds in check). We still have about 20 or 30 ears on the first 4 rows and the whole second planting to harvest in a week or so....more than enough for us to can and freeze for the winter.

All of the ears were fat and full; very few culls.

They are so sweet we were nibbling on them raw.

The gals shucking the corn, I cut off the horn worms.

Now we have to process them.

We froze 34 ears as corn on the cob following the Ball Blue Book instructions, we took 16 ears and made pickled corn and the rest we cut off the cob and canned using the pressure canner.

It can get tedious and we had to do several batches.

Presto 16 quart pressure canner worked like a champ....but we could have used the 23 quart.

While we were at it, we harvested some tomatoes, added onion, garlic and basil from our garden and popped them into the oven to roast.

Pureed them when they were roasted.

And we had the tastiest roasted tomato soup for dinner.

The pickled corn is in the pint jars and its very good...the whole house still smells like corn.

And while we were out the other day we found this wing backed chair for $68.00' its not an antique but its a nice chair and almost brand new without a mark on it.

We also found this swivel rocker for $15.00; again not an antique but not a mark on it and it just needs cleaning.

At a yard sale on the way home we bought some things for Judy and found these chairs for $1.35 each (we got 4)...not our style but they will due for temp use and the price was right.

We also found this old play bill in the frame for a couple bucks

We both had a long hard day watching the ladies do the canning.