Whoever it was came up with “knee high by the fourth of July” will have to dream up a new ditty. How about “sun-sweet kernels all in line on or about June twenty-nine?” Or “time to put all those slogans to bed thanks to the methods of one knucklehead.”
Yessiree, the knucklehead farmer has come through. After thirty-plus manhours transplanting corn seedlings, eighty-plus manhours hoeing and hand weeding, and many middle-of-the-night irrigation trips during an incredibly dry May, I’m about to pick some scrumptious unsprayed, unfertilized sweet corn.
Wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “to be great is to be a knucklehead?” So maybe I’m paraphrasing a bit selectively. And maybe I don’t really think I’m a knucklehead farmer after all. Maybe the knucklehead act is on a par with the “I’m not pretty” act the blonde puts on at her sister’s birthday party to redirect attention. Please oh please drop what you’re doing and look at my sweet corn. A perfect ear of unsprayed sweet corn is one of the great rewards of farming the way I do.
But wait. I’m not over the hump yet. Deer damage has been minimal so far, but raccoons are notorious for waiting until the night before harvest to throw a harvest party all their own. As Alvina Frey, a retired farmer who once supplied the likes of Jean George and Restaurant Daniel with her succulent lima beans and haricots verts, puts it: “One raccoon finds your corn patch and goes home to tell his family and all his neighbors. Next thing you know, your ears of corn are in the trees or broken in pieces on the ground.” It’s not just the black mask that gives the raccoon a reputation for banditry.
The old-timers tell me that the continuous sound of voices will keep the raccoons at bay. So at the first sign of raccoon damage, I’m gonna go out and buy me some transistor radios for placing in my corn field when I leave at the end of the day. Now there’s a knucklehead tactic. Subject those bandits to one of Rush Limbaugh’s rants.
So vote Republican, guys. Whatever. Just lay off my sweet corn.
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