🌽 21 Acres of Corn 🌽
Happy August, everyone! This year, I wanted to share a story about my childhood. When I was growing up in Coverdale, New Brunswick, I lived on a dairy farm. Farming is hard work, and I know that my time living on the family farm instilled in me a strong work ethic that I carry to this day.
My dad planted cow corn and parcelled 21 acres of sweet corn as a cash crop. My father planted this corn each year, and this sweet corn helped finance my sister and me through university, where we both attended the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. August 13th marked the first day of freshly picked ripe corn, as it was my sister’s birthday. We would celebrate with my sister’s friends and our family with a feed of corn for supper and birthday cake! From that day onward, until we returned to school, my sister and I would pick and sell 21 acres of corn. Corn is a tough crop to grow; we always had our hands full between fertilizer, weeds, corn borer, red-winged blackbirds, and rough weather.
While I no longer live on a farm in Coverdale, that appreciation of hard work and that tangible feeling of payoff for your work travelled with me from New Brunswick.
I wanted to share this story to get you hungry for corn (‘tis the season!) and tell you that if you really want something, you can accomplish it. You will need to work hard and apply yourself, and it can be tough at times. The challenge differs for everybody, and the reward does, too, but when I got to sit with my family on our farm back in Coverdale, celebrating my sister’s birthday, I knew that it was worth it, and I’d do it all again.
I also encourage you to buy a dozen ears of corn from a local farmer; you never know how much it will help that farmer and family!