Pelden Farm Sweet Corn
In the Midwest, we are in the thick of sweet corn season. And at Pelden Farm, we have had a magnificent crop. Perhaps it’s because Auntie had the monks to lunch here during the full moon at planting time. Perhaps it’s because of the more than abundant rain and the cooler temperatures we’ve had. Perhaps it’s because the raccoons have decided to spend the summer at the river’s edge eating mussels instead of raiding the garden.
Or perhaps it’s because the universe is trying to teach us something.
Just yesterday I asked my husband how much sweet corn his mother (Auntie) had planted. Apparently, this field takes up a half an acre. That’s 21,780 square feet. It’s also about 10,000 ears of corn. Of course, she staggered the planting so that the whole crop wouldn’t ripen at the same time. Every week, six of us head out at dawn to pick the rows she says are ready so that the fresh ears of corn can be tucked inside the CSA tubs the grandkids deliver to Auntie’s customers. Every week, then, we each pick about 250 ears of sweet corn.
Which means that so far, I have picked 1000 ears all by myself.
To someone like Auntie, this wouldn’t be a particularly special accomplishment. But I didn’t grow up at Pelden Farm—I married into the family, and while I am a regular visitor and garden helper, farm life and the kind of repetitive, seemingly mindless work it entails is still new and a little bit alien to me. I am accustomed to measuring my achievements in deadlines met and personnel problems solved skillfully. Picking 1000 ears of sweet corn doesn’t figure in to my professional development.
Does it?
Well, let’s see. On corn-picking days, family and friends who are able to help gather on Auntie’s front porch just as the sun is coming up. We have some hot tea and a muffin, grab a pair of work gloves and a few canvas bags, and trek over to the field. The sweet corn is past the sunflower field where the gold finches are already perched, eating their breakfast, past the pond where the blue heron stand still as posts, guarding their frogs. We are first to see the newest webs the spiders spun the previous evening, first to hear the red-tailed hawk keening overhead, and first to imagine we hear the quail and pheasants quaking in their nests. The field itself is a kind of forest of corn, well over my head, glistening with dew, trembling in the slightest breeze. And we are always so conscious of entering a sacred space that we rarely speak—we just spread out, staking claim to our rows, snapping off the ears of corn and tucking them into our bags. When we meet again at the end of a row to set down a full bag, we smile and go back to our work. Two ears of corn on most stalks, plant by plant by plant, leaves that can cut if you don’t pay attention, silks that stick to your gloves and, when you reach up to scratch an itch, plaster themselves to your face. Grab, support, snap, over and over and over.
And when I’m done, my mind is as empty as if I’d spent the last hour-and-a-half in the most blissful meditation.
So perhaps there is room for sweet corn picking on my resume. What do you think:
“My skills include the ability to focus on and appreciate the task in front of me, which has helped me to develop the equanimity required to deal skillfully with more difficult situations.”
That is, I can pick 1000 ears of sweet corn.
