Monday, July 29

This is a project that looked overwhelming when we started. Cerwin and I arrived at Larry and Karen’s place (our family homestead) about 8 am. Several others had already arrived – Amy (Karen’s sister), Larry, Marlin and Nancy (Karen’s parents & my sister), Fern (Larry’s mom) partially hidden.

Husking was the first project. Well, first after Larry and Karen picked it.

This project is so well organized by our niece Karen (left). It is her yearly summer mission project. Much of the finished packs of corn will go to families from our church and community who have gone through tough and painful situations. Also, some of their friends stop in for corn that has been ordered. They pay for it and take it home to process.

Other friends and family arrived to help during the morning and afternoon.

The tables close to me are filled with corn after it had been husked.

By 10:30 am there were only a couple dozen ears left to husk.

Larry took all the husks and eventually the corn cobs to their cattle.

While we finished husking, the process of silking the corn began.

The children enjoyed this job, because it is done with a machine that is owned by my sister’s family.

The ears that have silk on them are put into this end of the machine. As the corn turns, incoming water (from the hose) helps remove the silk.

It comes out the other end de-silked.

If an ear still has silk on it, it is sent back to the other end.

Then the boxes or tubs of corn were prepared for cooking.

Lilly (my sister’s great granddaughter) loved roaming around checking out the corn.

I tried to get a broader view of the silking and cooking. There were four cooking pots.

After it was cooked, the corn went through the cooling process. There were three large tubs like this of cooling corn. The last one had large blocks of ice in it.

These three inspectors sat nearby keeping an eye on everything.

Time for cutting the kernels from the cob.

The last job was putting all the delicious corn in bags. This is Karen’s sister Melissa.

Notice the ice packs? A few children were playing in an area of the yard where yellow jackets were painfully discovered.

I don’t know when the last corn was finished, or how many packs were done for a large variety of freezers, because we left at 6:30 pm when the evening shift arrived.

Imagine how blessed people felt when they got their corn like this.

I messaged my sister the next morning to ask when they finished. She said that she and Marlin helped with the cleanup and got home at 9:30 pm.