This is the one about corn. I write that first sentence as a practical matter for the many of you who will be searching for this corn essay in the future, after perhaps your mind wanders while walking the dog or you spot a particularly handsome ear of corn at the grocery store and think, "I really want to read Jordan's corn 'essay' again." And look at that...despite your affection for the corn essay you've cushioned the word essay in air quotes because you always thought it was a bit pretentious that Jordan used the word in reference to the spon-con he bashes out whenever beet sales are slow.
While you're having these thoughts you've become oblivious to your dog rolling in something awful and thus the grim turn your walk is about to take, or your cart has been blocking the path of two other now irritated shoppers who watched you stare right past them while mouthing the words 'beet sales are slow,' chuckling at your own wit. I apologize on both counts. Anyway, having commenced this way, with keywords like "corn" and "Jordan" and "essay" and '''essay''', you'll find it much easier later on to locate this essay amongst all the other corn essays in your inbox. If it's the blogosphere you're searching, just type "best corn essay".
The sole purpose of this paragraph is to establish that, save for this paragraph, we will not be talking about corn in this essay. By corn, I mean (remember, only in this paragraph) the thing that most farmers call sweet corn, but most other people just call corn, even though the thing they're referring to is the immature form of but one category of your corns. Other people call it corn-on-the-cob, which is more helpful in the sense that most other corns are not purchased on the cob, but is still vague given that all corn grows on a cob (also, sometimes people remove the corn from their corn-on-the-cob after purchase!) This primacy our vernacular gives to adolescent corn of one branch of the corn family extends to many popular cookbooks, which can be consternating if you reach to them for inspiration having felt compelled to purchase, after reading this corn essay, the corn referred to in all of this essay's paragraphs except this one.
With that cleared up, I can spend the remainder of this essay talking about corn. Only I'll be more specific, because just look at the mess we encountered in paragraph three! I'm referring specifically to milling corn or grain corn or field corn, three different terms to describe corn varieties that are grown to full maturity on the plant and then dried sufficiently for storage, the kernels ultimately destined for various culinary uses, of which there are very many, or for the whiskey distillery, or livestock feed, or ethanol production, or biodegradable plastic, and on and on. I'm not going to cover much history in this essay because let's remember that I'm just hawking beets but: corn was domesticated 10,000 years ago by indigenous peoples in what is now southern Mexico; there are thousands of varieties grown if you include hybrids and landraces; and each year humans grow about a billion tonnes of it. If you want more than that, start here and then buy this.
My main intent with this essay is to explain why I've shifted my crop production heavily in favour of milling corn in the last few years. The answer, and I realize this could be scandalous in households whose young children often covertly search their parents email in search of corn essays, is that it fucking tastes good. Like, really really good. Who knew? I sure didn't, until I grew a tiny crop of blue flour corn primarily for its ornamental uses. I didn't eat any, mind you, but in growing it to maturity I learned the basics of doing so, liked the pretty cobs that resulted, obtained an even prettier variety, grew that out, and then one slow winter day decided to grind some up and try it. My surprise and delight at what I tasted was related to my only other experience with milled corn, which was cornmeal from the grocery store. That stuff doesn't taste like much, which makes sense once you learn that certain aspects of the kernel--tasty aspects--are removed during milling to give it shelf life (my milled corn, which you can buy right now, is whole-milled and should be freezer-stored).
As of writing I've grown milling corn for four seasons. In 2021, I grew four heirloom cultivars: a blue flour corn, a yellow dent, a red/yellow flint, and a black-skinned popcorn. All of them taste great, although I'll be ditching the blue flour corn in favour of a blue dent that will grow better in the Okanagan. I bought a mill, because many of my household customers don't own one. And I'm contemplating some expensive machinery that will allow me to grow corn more efficiently, so that my prices don't make you swear as much. I mean, many of you will still swear at least a little. There is no way I can produce corn on five acres mostly by hand and charge the same price as corn grown on a thousand acres by three people and $750,000 worth of specialized equipment. Nor do I want to! But there are efficiencies to be gained with some tools appropriate to my scale.
What remains is arguably the harder challenge: getting people who are only used to eating corn (see: paragraph three) to eat corn (see: all other paragraphs). I mean, getting them to buy it isn't so hard, when you've got fingers like mine that can spin such durable yarn. But I suspect that some of those first purchases are being thrown in the freezer and forgotten. Which is to be expected. We all have our food grooves that can be hard to jump out of. Corn, once widely consumed in our culture***, has become a blind spot. Or worse, a thing of mild fear or revulsion, since in many minds it's the poster-crop of the negative tradeoffs of industrialized, cheap food.
In our home, we enjoy my corn on the regular in cornbread, pancakes, and tortillas (cheaty ones that incorporate a bit of wheat flour and fat because nixtamal is a whole other thing), or just mush, the catch-all term for corn porridges, polentas, etc. I'm slowly adding recipes to the farm blog if you need ideas.
I think the corn essay is over. Need any beets?
***I mean consumed on purpose, because if you eat processed foods, you're eating lots of industrial corn. It's everywhere!
