Monday, September 21, 2009

Got Corn?

We do. Boy, do we ever!

Friday my dad called and told me they were going to pick corn. We headed over to the McGary's house (they are long time family friends) to pick corn. My dad was going to be swathing it under, so we picked all we could. Then the plan was for everybody to go back to my house and start doing corn (freezer corn).
My dad had all of his pipemovers there to help. At one time there was my dad, Brent, me, Kara, the pipemovers and Garrett, Jayson, & Hannah out there picking corn. The snowmobile trailer was hooked to the 4-wheeler and we just kept picking and loading it up! We quit counting but I think we figured we had about 150 dozen ears!

Hannah is standing on the trailer with the corn. She loved being on the trailer! The weather was so nice but it was hot out there in the corn!


Here is Hannah, Jayson & Garrett on the trailer with the corn. We just drove right down the middle of the cornfield. The kids would jump off and play and then when we moved the trailer forward, they would run after it and jump on. I'm sure if the saftey Nazi's could see this they'd put a stop to it for sure. We did this kind of stuff all the time when I was growing up.



Its hard to see here (click on the picture for a better view) but the kids are riding on the trailer as it drives away. They rode it down the road back to Beckie's house. My dad looked at that and said, "Now thats what kids should do. Ride on farm implements all day!" My kids loved it.
They were waving all down the road like they were in a corn parade.

Since it is getting dark earlier now, we were doing corn in the dark. This is Friday. We did 86 quart bags that night. This is my parents outside, cutting corn. Sorry about the bad picture. Still don't have a camera. All of the pictures in this post were taken from mine & Blaine's phones.


Here's Brent and Terresa. They were on the deck where there was more light. He's still using his head lamp, though!


Saturday morning we started bright and early! Even my grandma came over to help. By the end of the whole thing, every one in my family had been there to help. Thats really the only way to do canning, in my opinion.


Grandma hates having her picture taken. She said, "What are you going to do with that? Put it on your blog or something?" Why yes, grandma. I am.


We had quite a system going. After husking enough corn for people to start cutting it, I started cooking the corn. We added butter and a little sugar and water to the cut corn and then boiled it for 5 min. It had to cool a little and then we could bag it.


I don't care what anyone says. Doing corn is a very sticky ordeal. In the end we got 263 quart size bags full of corn (about 3 cups in each bag). Thats a lot of corn! Thanks everyone for helping. We split it up amongst ourselves and now, sometime this winter when we can even think about eating corn again, we will enjoy it!
Here is the recipe we used:
8 cups corn
1 1/2 cups water
3 Tbsp sugar
1/4 cube butter
Boil together for 5 minutes.
Cool & bag. Freeze.
Batch can be doubled


P.S. My dishwasher wouldn't drain last night. The drain tube was clogged with............corn!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Ryan's 9 month check up

Ryan had his 9 month check up last week. He is a happy healthy baby! Here are his stats:
Height: 27.75 inches (30th percentile)
Weight: 19 lbs 7.5 oz (30th percentile)
Head circumference: 47.5 cm (95th percentile!)
His head growth has actually slowed a bit but its still huge. Oh well, Garrett's head was big too.
The doctor told us big heads usually run in families.

Anyway, since my camera is out of commission, here are some pics of Ryan from the latest set of photos we had taken. Enjoy!