Corn’s On!

My mom’s cousin, Janice, told me this great story. I hope I can do it justice and get the details close enough to accurate…

Years ago, my great Grandma Cloe, my mom’s paternal grandmother, lived on a farm in southwestern Washington. As the story goes, her husband, Bill, and a neighbor friend were headed out to go deer hunting. Upon leaving he said, “Now, Cloe, hold off on butchering those steer until we get back. It’s too much for you and I want to help with that.” Legend has it that Grandma Cloe had a stubborn streak (I have NO IDEA where I get mine. ;o) ) and told her oldest boys once Grandpa Bill left with his buddy, “let’s get those steer butchered and the meat canned up before he even gets back from his trip,” a real I’ll show him maneuever. Deep into that laborious process, Grandpa Bill and his buddy came back just a few hours later from their hunting trip. Lo-and-behold, they had bagged their deer right away. The beef processing suddenly turned into beef and venison processing with a double workload and a need to hurry. In the midst of all of this, someone came in from the field and shouted “Corn’s on!” Anyone who knows, when it’s time to pick, it is TIME TO PICK. Suffice it to say, they worked non-stop to process not just the beef, not just the venison, but now the corn, too.

I tell this story often. If you’ve heard it from me more than once, sorry not sorry. It’s just relatable humanity and I have felt that same thing, often due to my own stubbornness, to find myself in the midst of overwhelm with the equivalent of “corn’s on!” being shouted from the wings. Bryan and I would joke about this sometimes. April and September felt like that in our home due to what was also happening at work and in the garden.

Earlier this week, my boss’s husband brought in giant bags of corn. I took one home and finally, yesterday evening, processed all of it–shucking on the back patio, blanching, putting it into cold water, slicing and scraping from the cob, and then bagging up for the freezer. I appreciate the generations who have done this before me and who have taught me. I am grateful for the practicality of having stores for later. I am thankful for the lesson in delayed gratification–I do the hard work now so I can enjoy later. I’m also really glad for the applicable metaphor I see in many areas of my life. Building this life now prepares me for the life I want in the future.