The Corn Freezing Party of 2011

Sometimes I have these grand ideas and occasionally these ideas I have actually come to fruition.  This crazy corn freezing party was one of them.  I gathered about 7 or 8 like-minded friends and decided to put together a "party" where we shuck and freeze corn.  I did this last year mostly by myself and it was not nearly as much fun as it was last night.

We all decided how much corn we wanted for each family.  If you want to try to figure up how much corn you need for a family for a year, see my post here.  I then totalled up the amount and called around to some farmers who sold produce at the farmer's market.  I finally ended up at a little stand not too far from my house.  He had his corn priced at $2 per dozen, but when I told him I wanted 80 dozen he actually said his corn wasn't as fresh and gave me the name of a farmer who I could get it from for $2.50 a dozen and it would be picked that morning.

We made the arrangements, and my long suffering husband and I took off to the farm in my dad's truck to get the corn.  We brought it back home and I got ready for the party.  I had thought we would all do the shucking, but it didn't quite work out that way.  So, we all took turns shucking. Several of us shucked way past dark.  And we have a motion light on our deck and so every few minutes we would have to get up and have a "dance party" as Heidi called it so that the light would come back on.  My husband told me later that there is a button on it that I could have pushed to keep it on, but the dance party was so much more fun.

Oh yes, Kelly loves to shuck corn

And here is Connie working diligently into the night.

And we can't forget the cleaning and desilking (although later we found out we could just boil them first and desilk them after they cooled because this was really fresh, clean corn).  Hindsight . . .

She looks happy, but it was the beginning of the night.

Here are the stations:

Station 1:  Boiling - We boiled the corn for 8 minutes and then immediately put the cobs into ice water.  

Miss Heidi boiled inside

I boiled outside

At the boiling station my husband set up

Station 2:  Cutting - This is where we cut the corn off of the cob. Pretty self explanatory.
 

 

Station 3:  Bagging - This is where we did the bagging, labeling and sealing the corn.  And yes, I had a white board to keep it all organized, or as organized as it could be.

And I'm nerdy like this, but I made labels for our corn.   You know, just in case you can't see that each see through bag is filled with . . . corn.

We did not get everything done, but we did get all 960 ears of corn shucked (give or take a few that people took home early unshucked).  All-in-all it was a GREAT night of fellowship with some wonderful Christian ladies.  I think next year we will get the corn a day in advance and each take home our own ears to shuck and then come together to process it.  We thought that would work better and faster. 

Oh yes, we are going to do it again.  I say corn shucking is like child birth.  It is worth the effort in the end and, like labor, once it is time to do it again, you have forgotten how painful it was.

Right?

Oh, and as for these girls, they were huge helps.  I mean look how tired they were after all the corn shucking.

They are Connie's twins

Corn, its whats for dinner.  Or at least its what is served with dinner.