Oh August!
It's so easy to eat right now. Without recipes, without a dinner plan, just come home and start cutting up vegetables and see what happens. Maybe you'll turn on the stove and dirty up some pans, maybe you won't. On Sunday eve we fired up the grill on my mom's back patio, perched there in her backyard overlooking the quiet farm. We grilled burgers and topped them with butterhead lettuce and roasted peppers and fresh heirloom tomatoes and broiled eggplant. We were out of ketchup and it didn't matter; those burgers were so flavorful I was glad there was no Heinz distraction. Then came the sweet corn, first of the season (had to eat 3 or 4 ears apiece to make sure it made grade before we put it in the Harvest Baskets this week). And finally, blackberry pie by candlelight with hand-cranked vanilla ice cream. We were three generations sitting there in the dark, wrapped up in borrowed coats against the fog-chill, filled up by August.
This week marks the kick-off to sweet corn season, which should go on for many weeks this year. We planted more corn than ever in hopes of dragging that wonderful August feeling all the way into October if we can. The patch wasn't uniformly ripe yesterday so I had to cherry-pick the fattest ears for today's totes and farmstand. It means there isn't a motherlode of corn this week (4 ears instead of 6 or 8), but it also means there will likely be corn for you again next week.
Often during corn season we lose track of our kids on the farm. It's the rustle of the corn stalks that always gives them away. From a distance you can track their progress down the row as they leave a wake of rippling corn tassels. At the other end of the field they emerge triumphant, holding up ripe ears of corn like trophies. They shuck them right then and there and eat them raw like little raccoons.
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