First Corn Harvest of the Year , Sweet!

It’s Sweet corn season at the farm!  By the time I finish writing this, I’m sure the land has already been re-plowed and replanted for the second corn crop, harvestable in about 75 days.  Yup, it’s that fast but believe me, its far from easy.  


Harvest time is the busiest and this is how it's done at the farm.

The field of dreams, remember the movie?

Harvesting the crop on about a 1 hectare field starts early, and when I say early, I mean 3 a.m.  Some might start at 12 midnight but since the sellers plan to get this crop to Manila for the afternoon market, 3 a.m. is ok.  There’s another reason why they have to get these out of the field before the sun fully rises.  When it's off the plant, sweet corn quickly loses its sugars when heated.  Enzymes convert the sugar to starch and they work overtime at elevated temperatures… and that’s the food tech speaking :)

The "Mamimitas" after harvesting the ears loads it into the tractor.

So, with three work hands plus a tractor driver, harvest starts.  Everything is done manually thus, these people are called “taga-pitas”.  They remove the ears from the stems and leave them into mounds for easier loading to the tractor later.  They are also responsible for cutting off the stems with their “Karet”, a multi-purpose long and curved knife. This goes on for about 3 hours before they start loading the tractor to bring in the harvest to the sorting area.

The cobs are brought to the sorting area.  See the guy on top?  He's using his legs to unload the harvest.  What a workout!

The sorting area is actually just a make-shift shaded spot where with a split second hold on each ear, a “Tenor” classifies the corn into either “primera”, “segunda” and “kudla”.  “Primera” gets the largest and most perfect ears, “Segunda” takes the medium-sized ones while everything that doesn’t belong to both goes to the “kudla”, the rejects.  While looking at these ears being thrown into piles, I couldn’t help but smile, wondering how my postharvest professor would be appalled if she sees how everything is (mis)handled. :)

The pile of "kudla" ready for sorting and packing.

At around 5 or 6 a.m., wives and other women join in the frenzy as workers who’ll prepare the rejects for the market or the “mangungudla”/ “mambabalat” and packers or “manunupot”. Why? Because to get a better price for these rejects, you have to peel, cut-off parts of the corn which isn’t perfect then pack it into approximately a kilo each. It is then consolidated into a larger pack of 10 kilos to make it market-ready.  The rejects of the rejects called “bilog” are also packed into 10 kilos and sold at half the price of the packaged “kudla.”  What was once considered waste and given to farm animals are also sold in the market, probably made into soup and corn kernels.

Life in the farm is slow until harvest time when the "manunupot" and "mangungudla" work fast to ready everything for the market.

As I found out, peeling a hundred was a breeze but do this repeatedly for thousands needs patience and a whole lot of brawn (which I sorely lack).  After a few hours and sore hands, I promoted myself to the packing area, which I should say, was a bit easier on the hands. Believe me, there’s an art to packing these cobs to make it look market-ready.

Packers tediously gather the rejects to kilo packs.  The "Primera" and "Segunda" are brought to the market as is, sold per piece.

I’ve been an onlooker to countless harvests but for this season, I decided to get my hands dirty.  It actually made me appreciate how much hard work it was to farm, harvest, then market.  What a day! 

Simple Corn Soup (Good for 8)

1 large onion, chopped

1 tablespoon oil

2-1/2 cups cream of corn

3 cups of water (more if you want it less dense)

1 to 1-1/2 chicken bouillon cubes

Leafy greens like malunggay (moringa leaves), chili leaves, 

ashitaba, talinum (a local weed-like plant)

1. To make it easier to get cream of corn from fresh cobs, use a peeler to open up the kernels.  Then using a rubber scraper, scrape off the contents of the kernels.

2. In a heavy-bottomed soup pot or a dutch oven, saute onions in oil until transparent. 

3.  Add in the cream of corn, water and bouillon cubes.  Cook for about 10 minutess on medium high.  Add in the leaves at the last two minutes of cooking, just before serving.

Notes:  

Want a more filling one-dish meal? Add shrimp or meats,  saute it with onions. 

Not a fan of chicken bouillon?  Omit chicken cube and replace with salt or fish sauce.

Freeze it! You can cook the soup ahead and freeze, just omit the leafy greens.  Add the greens while re-heating it in the microwave or soup pot.