Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don't Care

There is an old song that is still sung today that dates back to the 1840's with the phrase in it "Jimmy crack corn and I don't care."  I have never had any idea what it meant.  I looked it up on Wikipedia today and there are wide disputes as to what it means.  Some of the thoughts include:

• Cracking corn means opening up a jug of corn whiskey,
• Crack corn being related to the term, 'cracker', a slang for a rural, Southern white,
• Cracking corn was an old Shenandoah expression for sitting around gossipping.

Wow, and all this time I assumed it must be about harvesting and shucking corn (removing the husk and silk)!  You learn something everyday! 

Well, despite most of our corn being knocked down and ruined in several strong thunderstorms that blew through that I ended up feeding to the cows AND some of the corn being eaten by Nellie, the goat, craning her neck over the fence and eating her fill, there were still a few plants that survived that we could harvest.  I had two different varieties planted at different dates.  The corn below is an heirloom Stowell's Evergreen Sweet Corn that is not ready yet.  You can tell it is not ready because the silk is still a pinkish-red color.


Not quite ready yet

Here is some that is ready.  You can tell it is ready to harvest when you can feel that the corn has filled out and the silk has turned brown and begins to dry out.  This one is ready to pick.  Each cornstalk has two or three ears on it.  I picked a bucket-full of some earlier planted white sweet corn and brought inside, looking forward to eating some  fresh picked sweet corn. 

Ripe and ready to pick

Tricia decided that she'd shuck it all and blanch the first batch while I was at work.  When I got home and asked about it she told me that the quality of the corn was disappointing.  As you can see below, the cob did not completely fill out with kernels.  This can be caused by several factors, namely pollination problems.  The pollination process was discussed in an earlier post and I won't bore you with it again.

Another culprit is photosynthetic stress, brought about by a stretch of cloudy days, excessive heat and drought conditions.  We've had our share of all of those, so I don't know the exact culprit, but the yield was hurt and the corn was 'ugly' as you can see below.


Cobs that are not completely filled out

But we're going to eat and enjoy the harvest we've been given!  Sometimes things happen and you just have to roll with it.

Looks like we'll have to eat two ears instead of one!

I had my hopes up from the one ear that I pulled the husk back on when harvesting.  I must've pulled the only pretty one in the bunch to take a picture of!


Mmmmmm

So Tricia removed the husk and the silk from the first batch of harvested corn. 

Corn husks

This makes a big mess in the kitchen so we have the broom ready.  When removing the husks and silk, there are almost always worms eating the tips of the corn, so you have to remove them and cut off the affected areas.

Making a mess in the kitchen

To blanch corn, once you've shucked and washed the corn, get a big pot of water boiling.  Once it has come to a boil, dump the ears of corn into the pot and cover.  You'll want to boil for 7 to 11 minutes, depending on the ear size.  Then remove the corn from the boiling water and submerge in ice water for an equivalent time to quickly stop the cooking process.  Blanching stops the enzyme action which can hurt the flavor, color and texture of the corn or any vegetable for that matter.  Then bag them up and freeze them.


Ready for the freezer

Then it is ready for whenever you are hungry for a nice ear of corn slathered with butter.  The cob is loaded with flavor as well and shouldn't be thrown away, but used in soups and then composted.  We're hoping our harvest of the corn planted later will be better.  We'll post when we harvest the corn from those stalks.