Harvesting Seed Corn for Next Year
We planted 9 acres of organic yellow dent corn in the Wheeler Field this year. Most of that will be milled into polenta flour or corn meal for retail sales at farmers markets or the Farm Store. But we also need seed corn for next year’s crop. So Suzy and her crew headed out to the field to pick 2 bins of ears.
They were looking for long ears with evenly spaced kernels, like the ones in Sonja’s bucket above. Hopefully, when planted these corn kernels will manifest the same characteristics in their offspring.
We wait until the kernels are dry and hard before we can harvest corn, even for seed. The timing was pretty good this year, thanks to all the warm, dry days we have had up until this week. The crew knew the weather was going to change so they headed out early Monday to gather up the seed corn before Sam took the combine and harvested the rest that afternoon.