Olathe Sweet-Sweet Corn | Life on a Colorado Farm

For some reason, just around this time of the day, I can get internet. It doesn’t last long but I can at least get on and post a new blog…and visit some of you. Then it is gone for the rest of the day. Stress, stress, stress.

There was a fire somewhere around Rattle Snake Gulch the other night. I always wonder what starts something like that. Always sad to see a fire somewhere.

This is a very blurry photo of a sweet corn field ….it won’t be long now…soon you will see either Mountain Fresh Sweet Corn or Olathe Sweet Sweet corn in your Kroger/Safeway/Wal-Mart grocery stores. They are advertising for pickers now.

Terry got part of the alfalfa field cut, but he still has at least three more hours to go. They are forecasting rain and thunder here this afternoon so he won’t be cutting today. Maybe tomorrow. Please continue with your crossed fingers. We would like to cut, dried and baled by a week from now!!!

The days are hot here and the humidity high. Drives Terry to distraction, since he much prefers Fall, Winter, and Spring. But I’m loving it.

The sun parted the clouds yesterday afternoon highlighting Hay Stack Mountain. Hay Stack Mountain is at the beginning of the Roubidoux Canyon, which is all part of the Uncompahgre Plateau and just below our mesa. You can See the brush descending down toward the flat lands when then drops right off into the canyon in this photo also.

Must hurry off here now…I think my time is just about up! Hoping everything is going well with all of you!

Your friend on a farm in Western Colorado,

Linda

The farming neighbor next to us grows sweet corn, called Olathe Sweet-Sweet Corn, for America’s adoring population of sweet corn eaters. It is a patented “delicious sweet corn watered with melted snow” so the advertising states.

To keep the sweet corn free of corn ear worms (people don’t like to see worms in their corn) pheromone traps are hung throughout the fields to capture the egg-laying earworm moths and prevent them from producing.

Corn ear worms are 1- to 2-inch caterpillars that are green, yellow, pink or brown with a white stripe and black legs. They pupate into tan-colored moths with a 1 1/2- to 2-inch wingspan.

As the larvae mature, they continue to feed on the corncob and work their way down the ear. As the corn itself matures, a second-generation infestation of corn earworm occurs as the larvae travel down the silk vein into the maturing cob where more significant crop damage occurs. The corn earworms even eat one another, normally leaving one corn earworm per cob until it eats its way out by eating a hole through the husk.

As a side note earworm pupae, which live in the ground can cause re-infestation in the spring. Sweet corn fields are plowed as soon as harvest is over.

Anyway, we are now seeing the pheromone traps hanging on fence-lines identifying sweet corn fields across our mesa.

Corn-Worms