Barefoot Memories of a Hillbilly - Fully Loaded (FREE ACCESS)

There are few things in life more lovely than a fully loaded cob of corn. From the point you first run your fingers thru the shucks (still attached to the stalk to check for the cob’s fullness to the moment you have it lying across your dinner plate, giving it a back rub with lots of butter, there are so many points of beauty to behold. And, even though you think there can’t be anything more lovely, someone brings out a salt shaker and you are forced to admit there was at least one more sight worth your perusal. A perfect ear of corn, steaming, well drenched in golden butter with a few grains of salt sitting across its spine, like glitter on a Christmas card.

Corn, next to maters, are my most favorite farm produce. It’s also pretty finicky when it comes to growing. The first tough decision involved with corn is when to plant it…too early and frost/freeze are guaranteed to wipe out your efforts and hopes for an early batch. Planting too late and you risk the wrath of hot/dry weather taking away your chances. So Farmer Brown is faced with trying to figure out the perfect planting time. Next there’s a decision to be made with choosing an “early variety” or a standard variety. Mom and Pap usually try to get corn in the ground by the first week of May. Danger of frost is usually gone after Mother’s Day, but Mom puts out early corn. In the past she has put out an early variety of Golden Queen, a sweet yellow corn, followed by a planting of standard Golden Queen. With the early and standard varieties both being planted, with spacing of planting dates, we’re guaranteed to have corn for a solid month or more. A few years back the folks switched to Peaches and Cream as their corn of choice, believing it better suited the flavor and sweetness they liked. So now they grow both early and standard Peaches and Cream corn, with maturation happening 66 to 90 days.

Like taters, beans and maters, it takes a lot to keep the bellies of all us youngens full thru the summer, and a whole heap more to can and freeze to last the rest of the year. In fact, it takes so much corn, that it looks like a regular factory. Whether it’s shucking, removing the silk, boiling whole or slicing from the cob, there’s jar and ring washing, constant stirring to keep it from sticking, measuring it into freezer bags and keeping the starchy clutter cleaned up to stave off the flies attracted to the sweet juice. It’s all hands on deck! It’s hot, shoulder tiring, sweat-bee, yellow jacket and pack-saddle attracting. But oh, that reward. The sight of neatly lined up canning jars and freezer bags of corn, broken into small sections to easily fit into the gallon jars, full-sized and fitted into the freezer bags, or sliced off and sealed in jars or freezer bags in Mom’s tried and true methods.

Then, there’s the reward, that moment when the kettle is set upon a wooden trivet in the center of the table, the lid lifted to reveal a mountain of steam bathed cobs, perfect and fully loaded cobs of corn, too hot to touch, too tempting to ignore. What a wonderful difficulty to have! Butter is faithfully massaged into the kernels, decorated with a sprinkle of salt, and there you have it…corn on the cob…fully loaded.