It's a sad day. We're saying goodbye to the corn, at least this corn.
Cause there's more corn right there. Not this guy. That patch.
We're taking this corn patch down today in today's vlog.
And a lot more. Jacques is, Jacques is just,
I don't know what he's doing there. Trying to see if there's any pollen left,
out of curiosity. There doesn't seem to be. It is kind of fun to do.
It's in my eyes now. An amateur move there. Honestly, that was a noob move.
Like that. Yeah, we're definitely in it. All right. Let's look hard.
Don't mess with the lopper gang.
We're coming. Okay. So the plan is, for the corn,
we're just going to lop it at the bottom and then isolate all the ears.
Because what's happening, the reason why I'm harvesting it right now it's,
most of it's actually done, but some of it is technically not.
But there's a cornworm or an earwig in every single top of every single cob.
And so I'll take a smaller cob over no cob.
So that's the plan. We're going to chop it down.
We've got another corn plot going. Let's do it.
Oh, that's satisfying. That's so satisfying. Look at this one! Are you serious?
That's crazy.
Look at this pile of corn.
I was telling Jacques I feel like a farmer for the first time in my life,
because there's so much, you don't even bother organizing it until later.
So why don't you do a peel right now? Let's see what it looks like.
This one was pretty low on the corn. Yeah.
So I'm guessing it's going to be pretty small. Oop.
See that's what's showing up in every single, hold on,
that's what's showing up in every single one right now. Little cornworm. One,
maybe two if we're unlucky. And look what it does. Oh my God. That's a huge one.
It just decimates. Holy, oh my! Dude. No, no,
I don't like that at all. That's going to be a bad little. Oh, ooh. Actually,
nevermind. Actually it's not. Wow. Wait,
how is this in the Astronomy Domine patch? Oh yeah,
it actually looks like the blue jade. It looks like blue jade. Huh?
Maybe a little bit of cross.
A little accidental planting by this guy right here. Not bad.
Honestly here's the thing. If you cut that right there,
you still have a little baby corn. Yeah. It's not bad. A couple bites,
a little muncher. Why not? Not a big deal. All right.
We're going to process this and.
We'll see you in a second.
So we're going to separate all the ears into this little tray right here.
All of the other biomass will go in the wheelbarrow.
I'm going to test out this old chipper shredder,
it's an electric one that I picked up a while ago off Craigslist,
in just a second. Because this is fantastic, fantastic organic matter.
We could just turn it right back into this if we wanted to. That's true.
If we could get that particle size small. So let's go. Yeah.
Oh, wow. That's so weird. Is that the silk? I mean that's a tassel.
Wow. Look at that. That's so weird. It's like it has that same issue,
but this one actually fertilized. And that was on top of the corn. I don't,
I actually don't remember what I pulled it off. Wow. That's really weird.
That's definitely a weirdo. I like it.
Sorry. Hey, Jacques just is abusing me over here. He just corn slapped me.
Might have been an accident. Might've been. Might've been.
It'll come up on your performance review.
The corn boys are back and it's time to shuck.
And the reason why is because I know there's a worm or an earwig in each of
them. So let's get to it.
I've got my cutting board out here cause I want to make sure that before I bring
it inside, I just cut off any messed up tissue. Oh,
there's a worm. I got a wig in mine. Yeah, it's not a good find.
It's not a good find. This little piece right here, I'll just do that.
And yes, this won't last very long so I'm going to process it.
And that will be either in this episode or another episode on the Homestead
channel. For those who are wondering why our corn is so irregular,
it's a landrace variety called Astronomy Domine.
And I mean,
a true botanist would know more than me but to me it feels weird to call a
landrace a true variety.
Cause it seems like there's so much genetic diversity in it that it just varies
way too much for me to feel comfortable calling it like something that's
anywhere close to stable. However, it's important to add in,
basically to mix back in new genetics into different crosses and all sorts of
stuff like that.
Which corn is just absolutely one of the most popular and crossed crops out
there. So it is still important to have,
just feels a little odd to call it a variety of that in my mind.
You're not going to have anything consistent. No. For sure. Wow,
this one got messed up. Yeah. That was one where definitely. Well,
here's the thing though, it's like you lose 15% of your ear, right?
Right. But the rest just looks amazing. Yeah. You know.
It looks really beautiful. It looks really good.
I don't even know if that's worth it. Yeah, little bite. Little corn popper.
Yeah, so still consistently every single one has a worm. Yeah.
And interestingly, it's only one worm in each one. Yeah. I did see one with two,
but that was far and away not the norm. Yeah, so we'll still have to wash these,
but we're just going to process it up. So let's take a look at this.
Whoo, it's hot. The silk looks like a floppy hairdo.
And when they're this vibrant and sort of fresh still, first of all,
they smell good. But second of all, nothing pollinated.
So this one just didn't get pollen from the tassels coming down,
which was unfortunate. But little known thing,
you can actually save all these silks right here and you can use these in a tea.
I don't know much about medicinal gardening,
but I do know that some people do really like to save it.
So maybe I'll give this a try. Yeah. My mom used to do that all the time.
Really? What did it taste like? Just like mild corn.
Just kinda tastes like corn. No surprise. I'm like, cool.
What did she, did she say what she was doing it for? I don't remember.
I think it was good for the kidneys or something. Right.
It's always good for some random part of the body that you don't think you
really have a problem with in the first place. Aaah,
how mad would you be if I just threw it at you right now?
I'd put it right back on you. If you want to go for it.
I could die by our own sword. By the way,
this knife is from New West Knifeworks.
They sent this out and it is so sharp. It is super fun to use.
I love a good chef knife. I'm obsessed with it.
In another life I would just be a chef, I think. Yeah,
I've often thought that myself. Yeah, I've thought
like what if I just left this world and went into the world of like
fine dining or something. Anyways, look at how much corn we have.
Should we do a count? Yep, sure.
And then the corn sword counts as three, so it's 30.
So 30 ears and I already pulled off maybe like 12 to 15 or so.
For this landrace heirloom variety with some interesting, you know,
conditions growing. Get this guy out of here, get out of here. Oooh,
you feel it? It's actually, it's actually pretty muscular. Muscular.
It's muscular. I don't like that at all. Anyways,
probably about 45 ears of corn off of that. Maybe 50.
Not too bad. I actually would've liked to see like 60 to 75.
But I wasn't growing this perfectly hybridized corn that optimized exactly what
you wanted. So not too bad. So that's it. Corn harvest.
So guess who showed up at the Homestead. The Epic mom. Caught her, eating lunch.
I'm going to make this corn silk tea. We'll see how it tastes.
We'll get the Epic mom's approval. Okay,
I'm just using a Googled recipe of a quarter cup of
corn silk, it's fresh, to about a cup of water.
Steep it for five minutes. So we will see how this goes. Time will tell.
It's been about five minutes.
This little tea steeper is nice cause you just put it on top and the water goes
down. So there's one for you, mom.
This one's for me. Cheers! All right, let's see what you think.
Smells like corn. Yup.
No? Not my favorite, I wouldn't say. Sorta tastes like corn.
Yeah, let's see. If it was medicinal.
It's supposedly supposed to be. I don't mind it.
It's kind of more grassy than actual.
Corn flavor. I mean, it's not bad. It's just not my favorite.
It's not bad, it's not bad. I probably didn't do it right.
So if you know how to do it, drop it in the Comments.
It's about 10:00 PM. It was a long day. I'm very, very tired.
But what I'm going to do is process some of this corn.
I can't eat all this fresh and husked corn does not last very long
at all. So I'll reserve a few years. I have some in the fridge already,
but what I'm going to do is blanch it.
So I've got a pot of boiling water that's heating up right now.
And what we're going to do is toss each of these into that water for about six
minutes or so.
I use the Ball Blue Book for Canning and they have blanching recommendations if
you're going to freeze the corn. So we're going to do that.
And we're going to then toss it into a bucket full of ice water for roughly as
long, just to get it nice and cool. And then I'm going to cut it all off.
So I'm going to take a knife, run it right down the side,
we'll cut it off in a whole kernel fashion,
dry that out and put it in the freezer.
We're about that boil point so I'm about to drop in the corn. Let's go.
Six minutes.
Just look at how that color changes. It's been six minutes,
we're getting it into the ice bath ASAP.
We have to treat this corn with respect, my friends.
We have to treat this corn with respect because it took us not that long to grow
it, but long enough that we don't want to mess it up.
So in it goes, batch two is coming soon.
The blanching is complete.
It is now time to get the corn off the cob and I'm going to use a super sharp
chef's knife.
What I'm going to do is this little hack that I've found where - it's annoying
to do this, right?
Because you're going to slip or you're going to do all sorts of weird,
annoying things. The kernels will get all over the place. Put it in a bowl,
put something on top that is smaller in diameter than the cob and then just come
down. Oooh,
life hack. That actually works right there. Look at that.
It's not the most stable thing I've ever done in my life. I just lost some.
Not the most stable thing I've ever done, like I was saying.
Maybe I'll put a little silicone pad down there or something.
But it seems to work better than what I was about to do. So let's process this.
Okay. I need to use something that does not have a ramped edge like that.
Try the trusty Zojirushi instead.
That's better. I think a bundt pan is the classic implementation,
but this will work. All this is going to get chopped and composted.
Never did I think that life would take me in a direction where posing next to a
bowl of corn that I blanched and grew myself would be what I would be
doing on a Thursday night at 11:00 PM. But nevertheless, my friends,
it looks pretty good. I think.
The variety really starts to show up when you blanch. Really cool.
So all I'm gonna do now is pack this up and put it in the freezer.
Corn's done, it's late.
Relaxing out here in the backyard, nothing in the backdrop anymore.
We're going to have to plan something there. But it is nice to come out here.
Dark, quiet,
the fence encases everything, the shed's right there.
Oh, it's like a perfectly warm summer's night.
It is time to probably have a sleepover out here in the garden sometime.
That's it for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching.
If you have a thing that you like to do with corn,
"pop" it down in the comments because I would love to know.
I'm always trying to improve my cooking. So till next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.