A little of this and a little of that —  our corn is starting to tassel and to make baby ears.  Our corn is NOT sweet corn.  We have corn that is used for corn meal and to make into feed for animals.

Not sweet corn.

BUT the sweet corn harvest has started in our area….you should be seeing western Colorado sweet corn arriving in your grocery any day now.  This area’s sweet corn is raised for two companies, Tuxedo/Olathe Sweet and the other company, Mountain Fresh.

The sweet corn farmers around here are having trouble with people stealing the sweet corn — this whole story is really sad.

What happens is in the dead of night the thieves drive into the sweet corn field, drive to the middle of the field then take the pick-up and start driving through the middle of the corn…they strip the rows they knock down with the truck (someone must be in front of the truck picking — then the truck drives forward and knocks the rows down) while there must be people on either side of the truck because they strip the two rows on either side of the truck…they go through the whole field this way, evidence shows that they have a small fleet of trucks so as one if full the other one gets full until they get to the end of the field.

Then they drive off to who knows where, once they leave the field there isn’t a way to prove that that sweet corn in the back of their truck is stolen.  The perfect crime.

This doesn’t seem like much, since the cost to you is in pennies or nickles or dimes or, possibly, quarters.  But that is money to the farmer, for every ear of sweet corn a farmer sells he makes anywhere from $.02 -(at the most) $.05 an ear. Truck loads of luscious sweet corn leaving is either the break even point for the farmer or the profit, most times it’s the break even point.

Gradually, as the sweet corn harvest went on last year the farmer’s grew desperate and hired night guards to protect their fields and their crops.

This also happened with the onion crops last year.

So this year farmers are starting out with night watchmen to protect their hard earned investment.  This whole thing is sad.

There is a fire in Utah somewhere.  Sometimes we see the smoke.

I’m off to get some of my yard work done now that the pinto bean field is cleaned of corn.

Have a good one!

Linda