When my daughter was a teen she used to tell her friends that she lived in the middle of a corn field. They would laugh and then google Dwight and agree that she did live in the middle of a corn field! Central Illinois is enduring some very hot and muggy conditions and our seas of corn are doing their usual to increase the local humidity. A continental summer with high humidity can be an unpleasant shock to recent transplants from more moderate climes.
Corn Sweat
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Wonderful.
I live in a hot and humid place AND the farms around me decided to plant corn this year.
Marvelous.
We managed to miss the 100+ day temps in Iowa– because we were driving up to South Dakota.
I have noticed that corn fields seem soggier than most other vegetation, which makes sense since it’s just really, really big grass, and I know that a yard will raise humidity, too. (All plants will, just stuff like trees will also give shade.)
You don’t know nothing about humidity until you’ve spent August in Louisiana. And June, and July, and September and …
Conceded Phillip. Folk Polk is the ghastliest base in a service which specializes in ghastly bases.
Also corn fields are noisy. The closer to harvest the louder. Kind of creepy sounding. Remember Stephen King’s Children of the Corn horror movie?
Ethanol, a corn by product, is not good for engines. But good money for the farmers. Recently my car was on fumes so I pulled up at the only available pump, non ethanol gas with sticker shock $6.99. Better mileage though.
In VA humans prefer white corn or Checkerboard. Yellow corn is grown for animal feed. In MN the opposite, white corn is for feed and yellow is for humans. Corn on the Curb is a big festival in Le Seur, MN. The Green Giant cannery there supplies the farmers with special seed. Used to be they sold corn fresh from harvest in the cannery parking lot for 50 cents a paper shopping bag. My brother and I would bag for our grandparents.
We were Suburban kids and thought it was fun. Best corn on the cob there is.
“You don’t know nothing about humidity until you’ve spent August in Louisiana. And June, and July, and September and …“
I think the Phillippines is even worse. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where it’s 95 degrees on Christmas Day… at 10am!!!! And the humidity, you take a shower and can’t dry off no matter how much you try with a towel.
Australia in the summertime is something. It’s either dry and searing in the outback or dripping humid and suffocating in the sun-tropics. Then there’s the water restrictions when the dam levels get too low.
Corn fields have always come across as a symbol of the rolling fields of the “mid-west” (excuse my ignorance if it’s the incorrect classification). It’s a beautiful image.
Isn’t it amazing how varied God has made the landscape across this earth?
Isn’t it amazing how varied God has made the landscape across this earth?
Not just how varied, but how related the variety is– up in South Dakota, I kept having “oh, oh, I know this! This is just like Lake County, Oregon!” (High desert).
It’s a little more humid, that I saw, but wow.