Jen Jeffrey: Harvest Time!

The cornfields on each side of our farm have intrigued me all season long. Aside from seeing the mock cornfield on Hee Haw (which my Daddy insisted on watching) I had never really seen corn growing up close. This summer I was eager to watch how an ear of corn actually emerged from the stalks and how the farmers gathered so much corn.

This corn is used for feed and is a big Ag production. My husband said they rotate the crop each year so next year we will live next to soybeans.

When I was living in Chattanooga and I wrote the series, “Growing Local” for Chattanoogan.com, I was privileged to meet and interview several farmers in the Chattanooga region who passionately and painstakingly grew produce or raised animals.

Most of the farmers I spoke with used organic practices and cared a great deal to bring their neighbors, clean food without the use of GMO seeds or the use of chemicals to protect their crop.  It was more work, but it was their passion.

At that time, I tried to jump on the bandwagon of eating all-organic and to stay away from the grocery stores’ processed food isles, but it was more difficult than I thought it would be.

I strove to buy food from my farmers, but the need for convenience usually won over my new obsession. I weighed the cost of health care and illness against the higher price of food the farmers needed to charge and to me it was worth it. If I ate clean, I would avoid illnesses and disease that certain chemicals or GMO have been said to cause and that made sense to me.

When trying to coordinate my schedule with a day when the farmers were at the markets and for when I was out of certain items became tricky. When I moved in with my mother to take care of her, she ate totally differently than I did. It was hard to get her to be as passionate as I was about changing how we ate and when I took her to the farmer’s market I lost any chance of that when she saw how much I paid for a couple of pieces of chicken. One of the farmers who raised free-range chickens without hormones charged $20 for two breasts. Most of the items were not that pricy and I admit that one farmer really had his price too high.

I still tried to argue that it was worth it, but taking care of Mama, buying the groceries on her list, getting to one of the farmer’s markets as we were out of something and to keep up with my work schedule was just too stressful.

Now that I am married and have moved away from those farmers I knew, I still try to eat organic when I can, but I don’t obsess about it. I will order the organic LoAdebars I love which are locally made in Chattanooga and have them shipped here in Kentucky and they taste wonderful. They are energy bars, but I use them as a meal replacement. I am not a breakfast person so I start my fuel intake eating a LoAdebar around 10 in the morning with a glass of organic skim milk. The price of my ‘breakfast’ is worth it, and so is the amount of calories.

I do buy organic produce and other items as much as possible, but after moving from Chattanooga to Kentucky, I no longer have the 411 on farmers and what they grow and how they grow.

Murray has a Farmer’s Market each Saturday at The Square downtown, but I have only been a few times and only to browse. Jason told me that as far as he knew, most of the farmers here mainly grow big Ag and it is usually corn, soy and tobacco, but we believe a few farmers here may grow gardens of varieties of produce that they grow clean.

We weren’t sure how many of the farms here practice organically, but as for the cornfields next to us, I have not witnessed any spraying of chemicals. In fact, it is almost as if the cornfields take care of themselves!

After the farmers sewed their seed (and shared with us the lovely aroma of manure) it seemed that they just let nature take its course. As the green started sprouting in the spring, it didn’t take long for the field to get waste high and also blocking our strong winds.

One of our editors/writers Jenny Gienapp lives in Wyoming and she often mentions the strong winds rolling across the plains of Cheyenne. I have watched her videos on Facebook and they made me wonder why people call ‘Chicago’ the windy city when I couldn’t imagine any place being as windy as Cheyenne! Jenny is lucky that she has naturally curly hair so that as the wind blows it still has style.

When the cornfields are low (or bare) I have found that our farm also has very strong winds rolling across the fields and I think of Jenny each time. Only… my hair is straight as a board and when it gets windblown, I look like I just climbed out of bed (which with some of the styles today I guess that is okay). The winds get so strong they will blow our outdoor furniture cushions across the yard so with the corn taking some of the wind I got a break from chasing cushions.

Each time I walked the Greyhounds passed the rising corn fields, I walked over closely to see when the first bud would become an ear, but it seemed to take forever. I would ask Jason when the corn would come and he told me it would be a while and wouldn’t be ready for harvest until October. October?! Surely it would be dead by that time.

Like any new wife, I sometimes question my husband when I don’t understand something for myself. I knew he was probably right because he has lived on this farm for five years, as well as being involved with the farmers he insures, but I just couldn’t imagine corn taking that long to grow when it was planted so timely.

Finally, in early summer I saw the beginning of hairy ears sprouting. It didn’t take long for the ears to grow fully – within days it seemed and, if I were the farmers I would have been picking corn as soon as it was freshly grown. But this field was for feed and the corn nearly looks dead before it is harvested.

It was very interesting to me watching this corn season especially since my church’s motto is based on how corn grows… ‘Growing down, up and out’. Our pastor is a farmer so he uses many illustrations of farming to get a spiritual point across. As far as growing like corn… we are to dig our spiritual roots firmly into the ground and as we grow up in Christ, we are also to grow out and share Christ’s love with others.

I wanted to see the corn grow “down” because I haven’t seen roots unless something is pulled up from the ground with them. The corn roots are thick and as the corn stalks began to get high and strong, the roots came up from the ground about an inch or two. The roots were red and the green stalks were thick like bamboo.

I began to understand one of my hiking trips with the Greys when I thought I saw dead ‘bamboo’ in the bean field. I now know that it was plowed-over corn stalks from the previous year of that farmer who also must also do crop rotation where he grows beans one year and corn the next. On each side of us we will have corn or soy growing and across from us it will be the opposite from the other farmer.

It was just so strange to witness the corn stalks standing firm when the roots were exposed. I thought they should topple over. But the roots and stalks were sturdy and when the corn emerged, they were even sturdier and held several ears of corn. When the stalks grew past my head our open farm became very private. I could no longer see my husband’s truck driving down our long, country road from our kitchen window. The wind became a nice breeze and nothing like it is when the fields are empty.

At the height of summer during the whole month of August, we stayed inside as much as possible because of the swarm of horseflies that were nearly plague-like. Many people told me they had never seen a horsefly season such as this year.

When summer faded along with the horseflies, autumn was clearly in the air… but the corn looked all dried up! The farmers had waited too long! Maybe they couldn’t pick the corn because of the flies and now all was lost.

My husband was right, as usual. The farmers let the stalks turn brown, the stalks grow an almost wheat-like topping that sways in the breeze. I walked along the dry, cracked earth where the roots still held the stalks upright and I just could not understand how this corn was of any use now.

October arrived and so did monster trucks next to our farm! I had just finished sprucing up the outside, painting our front door and raking all the leaves against our house. Tractors, combines and semi-trucks did the harvesting. No farmers were out in field handpicking corn. I watched the first field being harvested and saw the trucks plow through the rows of corn with smoky dust keeping me from seeing too close.

All I could gather was that the noisy truck traveling down the rows, somehow vacuumed up the corn in its vat and then after it had its belly full, the big truck then went to an even bigger truck and filled the semi with grains of corn. I wondered how the machine separated the shucks, the cobs and stalks. I wished I could be really up close and see it in slow motion.

After the trucks left the field to the right of us, our yard had corn shucks strewn all over. Jason didn’t seem too concerned, he said the landscapers would go over it with their mowers and it would be fine. The next day, the left side of the cornfield was harvested. This time, I tried to take pictures. When I got as close as I could near the cornfield and saw the combine emptying its grainy treasure into the semi, it looked like fire pouring into the truck.

After the farmers left with their big trucks, I was anxious the next day to walk with the Greys and see the ‘end result’ of the cornfield. Part of the field still had about six inches of stalk sticking up and part of it was flattened. The stalks were flat across the fields and the doggies and I wanted to explore. I had never walked through a cornfield before. I would not want to disturb a farmer’s field while it was growing, but with it all harvested I wanted to run through it just to say I did!

The Greys did too. We ran on the flat part of the corn field until we got tired. It went on forever! Far out past our property line, far past the woods where the deer sleep, and beyond. I just had to walk until its end!

I knelt down and scoped the debris of left over corn cobs – they were rustic red… just like my newly painted door. That was when I noticed the ‘dead bamboo’ and connected seeing that on my hike and learning that it was actually battered corn stalks.

I took a few photos of the red color against the brown and gold. This autumn was as alive to me as the autumns on Lookout Mountain! I found a lone row of about five empty stalks still standing in the middle of the field and took a picture of it waving against the blue sky. It was gorgeous!

And then a familiar friend greeted me with whips and whirls smacking my clothes and my throwing my hair around. The cool summer breeze of the farm once again became a fierce wind coaxing me to play.

jen@jenjeffrey.com