Growing Corn

In the vicious chill of a Southern Kansas Winter the feeling came over me, insistent and emphatic: 

“This year, I will plant corn.” 

My first memory of growing corn lay faint—it must have been a four-year-old me because my job was to count out the pearly white kernels with a faint pink blush and drop one…two…three kernels into each hole dibbled into the Georgia red clay. I was proud of my counting and delighted to help. I was even more thrilled when the sweet white cobs of “silver queen” were ready to be eaten, shamefully covered in margarine. Real butter was unknown in the 80’s south. I would be a teenager before I tasted real butter and in my mid-twenties before I tasted freshly churned butter—the difference between these buttery stages reveals epochs in my own history and understanding of food. 

Since that childhood experience, I have never planted corn again, even as a farmer. It has never crossed my mind. Perhaps it is a rebellion of sorts to the thousands upon thousands of acres of corn that surrounds me in this region. Destined for bio-fuel, animal fodder or corn plastic, not for human consumption—not directly, at least. 

This is NOT the corn I want to plant. I also have no interest in my childhood hybridized sweet corn. I search the seed catalogs that begin to arrive in the soil-hungry winter. I desperately want an “old” corn that predates its commodification. I finally choose an heirloom variety, “Bloody Butcher,” named for its speckled red presentation.

In early May, I dibble holes in mounds of dirt and plant the red jewel-like corn kernels. When the pale green corn unfurls a few inches, I plant Seminole pumpkin to shade the ground and smother weeds and pole limas to climb the corn.

The place I planted is freshly reclaimed. Garden space a decade ago, but it has spent the past ten years covered with whatever wanted to grow. The weeds are unwilling to relinquish the plot of ground to the corn. I struggle to keep the bermuda grass and bindweed at bay. I am out of town for just a few days, but when I return, all weed hell has broken loose. I do my best, but I am no match for the onslaught. I must focus on my rows of herbs and give the corn my leftovers, weeding half-heartedly in a lost battle.

The corn grows taller than I could have imagined, twice my height,  maybe more. The corn patch begins at the end of the rows of chamomile that must be hand-harvested every few days.

When harvesting, I would often hear a whispering that sounded like voices. I would look around, checking the phone in my pocket for an inadvertent dial. Always, I would find it to be the whispering of the wind in the corn—even when there seemed to be no wind, the stalks would rustle imperceptibly. When my back was to the corn, I turned around repeatedly in response to a tangible presence. “Oh, it’s just the corn again.” 

I have always felt a sense of welcome with herbs like they are glad I am there. But not the corn. The corn was different. The corn seemed like a stern mother rebuking a naughty and careless child. I could almost imagine the corn shaking a finger at me with a scowl. I know what I have done, what I have left undone. The corn is overgrown with weeds, and I have not taken care to give it the fertility it needs to grow healthy and well. 

I gardened the whole season under the watchful eye of the corn. I was becoming aware of the places where I harvested and did not give the plants what they needed in return. Aware of my tendency to take without gratitude, consume without awareness, treating plants like commodity rather than co-creatures, co sustainers.

Much of the bloody butcher corn fell in a heavy prairie windstorm. They were planted too far apart to support one another adequately, and I also failed to mound them up as I ought to establish deep root systems. Still, I harvested the ears, many of which were fully ripe and dry. A few were still sweet and milky—these the children ate raw as “garden candy.”

Now, the seasons have come full turn. I am again restless in the bitter cold of a southern Kansas Winter. A dried cob of Bloody Butcher corn sits on my desk.

This year, again, I will plant corn.