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School Started

Getting back into the routine of going to school has kept us busy.  The corn stalks are still growing and we have picked some ears.  We'll be back to posting about our corn-y experiences soon, including the endeering ones ...

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Ear to Ear: Growth Update

We picked a single ear of corn earlier in the week: Japanese Hulless Popcorn.  We only picked one because most of the silks still looked quite fresh, and we want to have our ears as full of kernels as possible.

How kernels are born:  Each time a pollen grain falls from the top tassels (the tippy top of the corn stalk), usually with the help of wind, and meets with a single silk from another stalk, it produces a single kernel.  The more meetings of pollen and silk, the better the chance of finding full ears of corn.  This process is called pollination.

When we shucked our ear of Japanese Hulless we found it was full, but that it didn't look fully grown.  Our resource book, "Grow the Best Corn" by Nancy Bubel, says corn will mature at it's own rate.  The dates given on the seed packets do not include how the weather (temperature and rainfall) will effect the growth.  We decided to give this corn more time to grow.

Today we did our weekly measuring.  Pop found a PVC pipe and we measured it to be exactly eight feet long.  Since he is much taller than we are, we had him hold the pipe up to the very top of the tallest stalks and then we measured the difference from the pipe to the ground. 

All the corn is growing nicely.  We thought nothing would beat the Bloody Butcher for height, but we were wrong!  It has been dwarfted by Zea Mays Squaw Corn.  The seed package said it grows to 12 feet high, but ours is 13 feet and 9 inches high! 

In the picture you can see the remains of a scarecrow we made for the Kernel a couple of years ago when he grew his garden where our corn field is now.  It's kind of spooky looking! 

Goofing Off

Instead of measuring the height of our corn yesterday we decided to go to the Bridgewater Fair.  We're glad we did!

We bumped into Mr. Halas.  Mr. Halas was a great resource to us when we were first starting our experiement.  We got to briefly tell him how well the corn is doing.  He was happy for us.

Then in the judging tent we saw this:

It's corn from Larson's farm. We wondered: how could they be entering corn into the fair for judging when we saw their fields full of weeds? 

Later on we bumped into one of our Mom's friends, she had the answer.  She said that the field of weeds we saw is where Larson's grew cattle corn, not the sweet stuff we like to eat.  Apparently they're growing the sweet stuff elsewhere as they can be found at the New Milford Farmers Market on weekends.  Mom said she'll try to arrange for us to visit the Farmers Market.

Tomorrow is an important date.  Based on our calculations we'll be able to pick ears off one of the varieties of corn we've been growing: the Japanese Hulless Popcorn.  Does this mean we'll try popping it right away?  No.  We plan on picking just one ear to see how ready it is.  Then we'll have some more research to do on how to dry it so that later on we can pop it.  Our Aunt was telling us there is a place that sells popping corn right on the ear -- just stick it into the microwave and watch it pop right off the ear!  That sounds really cool!  We hope we can do something like that with our popcorn. 

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Bambi Brought Friends ...

... and we're hoping they're not eyeing the corn as a future tasty snack! (photo was taken by our Pop early this morning with his cell phone camera.)

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The Hard Knocks of Being a Farmer

This summer we have had several heavy rain storms that, based on our memory, seems to be becoming the norm rather than the exception.  These heavy storms cause much flash flooding which then causes a lot of damage.

On Sunday we measured the corn and meant to blog about it yesterday.  That didn't happen.  Instead the clouds were dark and heavy, and rolling thunder clapped loudly.  With those weather conditions we were not allowed to go outside and take some pictures for the entry.

Eventually yesterday's rain came, and when it did, it came hard and fast, smacking up against the house and windows loudly.  When it was over we received an inch and a half of rain in less than an hour!  We could hear our local fire station sirens blasting -- we're sure there were trees down, car accidents, and possibly more emergency needs all because of this rain storm.  Some places even reported hail!

We spent much of the late afternoon yesterday and today trying to save many of the bent corn stalks -- sixty-six in all were damaged yesterday.  We'll be lucky if we can save half!  We wonder if real Connecticut farmers experienced the same type of damage.  If we were growing all this corn to earn a living, rather than as an experiment, we decided we would probably find something much easier to grow!  The weeds seem to be doing quite well! 

Hide & Seek

It has been many, many weeks since our praying mantises hatched and were set free.  And it has been equally as long since we have seen evidence of them around the yard or in the corn field.  That is until today! 

After looking in on the corn field and discovering one stalk (Bloody Butcher's) had fallen down because of the stormy weather we had, we had decided to play some basketball.  So we went to our outside toy box to discover a single praying mantise was standing there, almost like he was watching us.  Next to him, we think, was his dinner, a hairy spider about the size of a nickle; he looked like he had already been "dined" on.  Ewwwwwwwwww!

We needed to get into the toy box so we could get our basketball out and did not want to hurt the praying mantise, so we got a stick and gently moved him over to a nearby bush.  (We think he was done munching on the spider.)  Mom suggested we move him to the corn field, but if our ladybugs ever arrive, we don't want him munching on them.  We think he'll be happy in the bush.

If he is one of our babies, then he has grown about three inches.  He's hard to see in the bush, but finally the camera was able to focus on him.  We think he's cool!