Children of the Corn

Last summer, the hubs and I had a small container garden in the back yard of our rental in Uptown Minneapolis. We grew tomatoes, green peppers, eggplant, banana peppers, broccoli, basil, and oregano. It was lovely.

This summer, we live in a suburb of DC with no balcony and not even a view of grass. Circumstances being what they are, we've enrolled in a CSA. We signed up with Spiral Path Farm, a mom-and-pop certified organic farm about 2 hours from us in Pennsylvania. We payed around $400 for a medium-sized share in the farm and every week we pick up a giant bag of produce from our local farmer's market. The share goes from May until November, and works out to be about $17 per week for our share.

Being a local, organic, small operation, Spiral Path Farm experiences abundance and scarcity -- and as share-holders, we experience that right along with them. We have had an incredible experience every week -- our box overfloweth each Saturday, despite obnoxious heat and a rainfall deficit plaguing a large part of their growing season. The produce is fresh and delicious, bountiful and varied.

The farm is organic, meaning no pesticides. Pest-control is done by birds and other pests, just like it was in our back yard garden last summer. So it comes as no surprise that on occasion we find holes in our lettuce or aphids on our leafy greens. They're part of what happens when nature does its thang. And nature's thang features insects. Lots of them.

So it comes as no surprise that insects find the farm's sweet corn as delicious as we do.

What you see there are three ears of corn that have been nibbled by bugs

(the tiny one never really matured, so I just lopped it off).

What kind of bugs, you ask? Well, let me show you!

The smaller one is a corn earworm. The larger is your standard inchworm.

A baby corn earworm and our friend the inchworm.

The larger corn earworm had by this time scooted off somewhere

in the bag of corn leavings to continue eating.

I believe this was because the corn earworm and the inchworm seemed to be

having some kind fight that involved the two of them biting each other.

Many people would probably be ooked out by finding worms in their corn and toss the ears. But, in a move that will probably surprise no one, I opted to do this instead:

Because here at the Farley house we do not simply throw away perfectly good corn.

I just took the wormy bits off and will proceed to eat the rest of the perfectly good corn.

Now why does this not gross me out one bit? Well, because... honestly because it comforts me to find Children of the Corn. It makes me feel connected to my food. It makes me feel connected to my community. It reminds me that the corn and the worm came from a system that still lets nature do the work, where insects still get to play a role in the growing process. It makes me feel like my food was grown on a farm, not in a warehouse. It reminds me that a family went out onto their land in Pennsylvania and picked this corn, and that their choice to grow and pick this corn has allowed my family to make the choice of leaving the supermarket behind. And it makes me feel like even though I live in a crowded suburb with no grass right now, I will not always be in this right now. It makes me feel like someday I'll be able to get back out into a yard where I can grow my own food and pick my own wormy corn.

And I feel like I'll have a connection with those worms, too -- the same connection I had this morning -- when I got to nod with these worms and say "I know, this corn is so good, right?"