Seed to Table: Sweet Corn at Brian Campbell Farms

[Music] hello I'm Brian Campbell the owner of Brian Campbell farms and we're here today in Columbia County Bloomberg and Burling [Music] I started in 1990 on a larger scale I'm farming approximately 1500 acres large portion of the crops that I raise the sweet part are marketed to Walmart then guy in Kabul I also have a retail stand that I've had for 40 35 years we tilma ground in April and we also do some no-till practices but it's important to fill the ground in April because by turning it over actually exposing the darker brown soil which allows it to eat up quicker and are only on when we're planting we need for more soils to get the seed germinated there's also scheduling so we'll start Fanning in April we will plant almost on a weekly basis so that we can have sweet corn all the way through the season and we will plant a sweet corn all the way up through June so that we have have foreign for the market you know throughout the month of September we use a a harvest aid when we're in the field and we're using 28 men on that particular harvest line to harvest sweet corn and we actually started harvesting that night time when the temperatures are cooler which is a helpful total worker but also to the consumer when the corners a little bit cooler the corn has then brought into the packing house that are already packed but we then do a an icing process to put Malak corn they go into our coolers and then they're sent out on a daily basis for the different channels that we market on there's many opportunities from seed to finish that there can be hiccups along the way and when I say hiccups that's because you plant that sweet corn today doesn't mean you're going to harvest it July in August then have a nice year whether it's pests weather conditions animal damage many different areas that that can cause failures to a sweet corn problem we just had a nasty flood several hundred acres up through the Fishing Creek Valley in from the head on actually Monday just a couple days ago and we're here in the meat of the season when it comes to wholesale sweet corn and the grocery store chains Labor Day is a new holiday for them so we've got two weeks here probably 200 acres of sweet corn it was up through the fishing Creek Valley that's was under 4 feet of water and so from a food safety perspective we can't harm their staff because the water was up over the year so that would be a weather condition that that's really affected us here much of the sweet corn that you may get from the grocery store shelf would be a super-sweet variety super-sweet varieties were bred for the grocery store chains so they've got a much longer shelf life a higher sugar content but also can be a little harder and crunchy err and they fall out the pericarp so but consumer when they're picking corn from the grocery store may not have that you know great sweet corn flavor that you may pick up when you're at a local roadside stand here in Pennsylvania some of the roadside stands they like a much more tender pericarp which is that outer covering so you're picking up farm from a local roadside stand you may find it it's a little more tender and it pops in your mouth and and much pressure so there is a difference between between corn that goes in the grocery store and at the retail stand so you may go to the roadside stand and purchase report in the morning you want to get that cool as quick as possible so the quick that you can get it into in the refrigerator and keep it cold but the more sugar content you're gonna have sugars change so starch is very rapidly at higher temperatures so you really don't want to put that corn in your car all day and then take it home you're definitely notice a difference by getting that one to town how do you take that little seed then produce a your a sweet corn like this and seventy days or maybe eighty days depending on the maturity of it so you're taking that little seed and you're planning it early in the spring when the conditions could be wet cold so on and so forth so most most of the time to see that's treated with some punch aside so on so or so that it protects them a little bit to get up out of the ground so that little seed does have some nutrients in it which is enough nutrients for that seed to get up and get started then it's gonna rely on some of the nutrients that are in the ground unless you're organic you're putting some type of herbicide on the ground to prevent the weeds from coming up weeds can be devastating to the crop because they'd a trade-off the nutrients are out the water and you're probably going to end up with nothing so you're gonna keep your field clean it started with that little seed and then it's gonna start growing and once it gets a foot high you're gonna see rapid growth from that foot high - five six feet depending on what variety you have so it then comes into the faceting stage the castling stage is when that tassel comes up out and the pollen is up on the tassel then you start seeing the ear come out and the silk is on the on the ear so the pollen needs to drop from the tassel down to that silk in order for those kernels to get pollinated so I'd like to show you here with the Neira corn this doesn't have much soap left on it but it's interesting with the Neira corn [Music] and I didn't know what variety this was or what color it was but we can see that it's a white variety and maybe a little more education because there's a couple yellow kernels in this particular ear which means it was cross pollinated by another piece of pollen from a variety that had some yellow kernels in but anyway so you see all this silk up on the top each one of these silks are the pollen tube and each silk is actually connected to a kernel so the pollen on top of the tassel has to fall down go all the way down the pollen tube to each kernel and without that happening a kernel would not be able to develop so every one of these kernels has a silk on top so these silks could be chewed off by a an insect causing disruption and it wouldn't get pollinated dry weather could come in and the dry weather could keep it from getting pollinated properly so you need a healthy plant you need the pollen to fall on the silk go down the pollen tube and then pollinate that kernel and William thought sweet corn that you can take home and and years ago you would steam it in a pot and boil it in water put some butter salt and pepper on it and that's how most everybody ate it but what a long ways there's so many different ways that people are eating it now they're roasting portent they're steaming corn and putting all kinds of sauces on it many different spices that are on it a couple interesting ways that that I will eat corn I'm actually always eating corn in the field not as my my my breakfast or my lunch but to taste it and see how mature it is if it's getting tough or what the sugar content is I don't know that many people have eaten it long but I it's really good to be honest with you so I'd suggest some of you folks out there too haven't tried it raw give it a try it's it's good and it's it's a something you folks probably haven't done in addition to that I prefer to just husk it and and steep it a little bit lately I don't like it steamed too hard and I I like the old-fashioned butter on it and a little bit of salt although I do enjoy some of the other spices and the roast roasting the fact that they have on it on the grill so many ways to enjoy sweet corn out there and encourage you to try different things [Music]

Channel: PA Veggies

Views: 723

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: sweet corn, corn, pennsylvania, vegetables, local food, bloomsburg, farm to table, brian campbell, columbia county, pa produce month, paveggies, healthy, recipes

Id: FT2W9JHspl4

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 22 2018