Published: October 04, 2009 01:53 am      

REAGAN: Cheers for all those marvelous ears

The calendar has promised us a full harvest moon tonight, and Harvest Homecoming is looming ahead this week. In consideration of all this, I feel ti n appropriate time to say a few things about a fabulous food item we harvest more of than any other here in Hoosierland. I’m speaking of that simple little word, c-o-r-n.

Cardinals love it! We feed it to chickens, hogs and horses, and we liquifiy it and power our automobiles with it. Also, we buy it from the cereal, snack food, frozen food, and fresh vegetable aisles in our supermarkets. And, of course, it flavors most of the corn-fed meat we buy.

What would Georgia be without grits; Kentucky without corn “likker,” Homecoming without corn dogs; pancakes without pancake syrup; Kellogg’s without Corn Flakes; a covered dish dinner without corn pudding; or a movie or ball game without popcorn?

Lorraine Cobb was my DuPont secretary for many years. Among the many exploits she told me about was that she had once been a vocalist with a dance band. I asked her if they were called, “Four Colonels and a Cobb?”

Next to basketball, the Indianapolis 500 and the name “Hoosiers,” I guess Indiana is as well known for corn as anything else, even though Iowa and Illinois may surpass us in quantity grown, and Nebraskans call themselves, “Cornhuskers.”

When Oscar Hammerstein wrote that line, “I’m as corny as Kansas in August,” he proved he was a great songwriter, but he wasn’t quite up to speed on the geography of corn.

We don’t grown much corn on the small farm where I grew up near Mauckport. That doesn’t mean I didn’t spend a lot of long, hot days in the cornfields of other farmers in the area. The process was a lot more laborious in the 1930s than it is now. Then, we planted the seeds by hand in a furrow, then covered them with a hoe. Throughout the summer, in those days before herbicides, we battled the weeds and morning glory vines with gooseneck hoe.

In those days, harvesting of the mature ears in the Fall was done by hand, snapping them from the dried shucks in which they had grown. Doing that all day at a brisk walk was a tough exercise for the hands.

At our house, we had a hand-cranked sheller to separate the kernels from the cobs.

On most farms, the stalks were then cut about knee-high with a machete-like knife and stacked in shocks, to be used as fodder for cattle in the winter. It didn’t seem to be particularly good cattle feed, but it would sure provide roughage in their diet.

To my knowledge, corn shocks are a vary rare, if not extinct, commodity today. Students who happen across James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, “When the frost is on the pumkin and the fodder’s in the shock,” probably wonder what the heck he was talking about.

Roasting ears (sometimes referred to as “rosuneres”), fresh from the stalk in early season, and liberally slathered with butter, are one of God’s greatest gifts to the palate. Just don’t cook them for more than five minutes after the water boils or they will get hard.

Audrey loves cornbread. She is a cornbread baker extraordinaire. If they ever have a World’s Championship competition in that event, I hope to get her entered. She says the principal secrets for making scrumptious cornbread are: 1) uses buttermilk instead of sweet milk; 2) use a heated iron skillet; 3) include one egg in the batter; 4) add the medium batter when the shortening has melted in the hot skillet; 5) bake in a hot 450-degree oven; and 6) don’t put in too much corn meal or it will be crumbly.

I have always felt that the farmers who grow corn are grossly underpaid for the treasure they produce. For example: a bushel of shelled corn weighs 56 pounds. My last check at Kroger’s showed a 24-ounce box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes priced at $3.56, and a 17 and a half ounce bag of Fritos at $3.99. Thus, a bushel of corn would produce 36 such boxes of Corn Flakes, or 50 bags of Fritos, while the farmer gets a few paltry dollars per bushel for the corn they are made from.

Chief Massasoi, Squanto, and those other Wamponoag Indian braves had no idea what they were starting when they taught the paleface Pilgrims how to grow corn (including putting a small fish in each hill) many moons ago in the early 1600’s.

It’s interesting that a cornucopia is the symbol for prosperity and is pictured as the “horn of plenty.” As Americans, that has been our good fortune, hasn’t it?



C.R. Reagan is a native of Southern Indiana who enjoys writing about local events, travel, current issues and senior living. His column appears once a month in the Spectrum.