Farm Life Archives - Page 4 of 19

Processing Sweet Corn Efficiently

Ah, sweet corn season in Illinois.

Delicious ears of corn, bred to be tender and sugar sweet. This is one of my favorite summer vegetables.

Since it takes a lot of space to grow enough sweet corn to make it worthwhile, we purchase from local farmers at markets or roadside stands. One such stand near us, pile stacks of corn, still in the husk, high on a flatbed wagon. The method is to bring your own bag, load it up with ears and leave cash in the box on the stand. It’s an honor system that works.

Sometimes in the season’s height, a summer meal may consist of three or four ears of corn, a plate of fresh tomato slices and a mound of cottage cheese. Naturally, I want sweet corn year round, so to make that happen, I buy extra to preserve.

Putting up, sometimes called putting by sweet corn, is a time-honored ritual in my family. By putting up, we mean processing the corn and preparing it for storage. Then, in the dark days of winter, we will have a taste of summer in our pantry or freezer.

My Grandma used to pressure can most of the sweet corn she stored. It was shelf stable and not dependent on electricity to keep the food safe. While that is a great method, and I pressure can many foods, I freeze sweet corn. I like the flavor better and it is much faster to process.

Here’s my step-by-step method, developed through many hours of experience with an eye to efficiency.

First remove leaves or husks, or as we call it shucks and silk. This is best done outside and with helpers if you are going to process a lot of corn.

When shucking corn, have a line of buckets to work with and get a comfortable chair. I am right-handed, so I tend to work this chore from left to right. The corn to be shucked is in a basket on my left, a bucket to catch the shucks positioned in front of me, and a large pan or dish on my right for the bare ears. I pull down the top of the shuck from two sides at once, somewhat like peeling a banana. I try to get all the silks off, but this is not always easy. My trick is to keep my hands as dry as possible and use a twisting motion to loosen the silks, picking off as many as I can.

Next into the kitchen. For corn to stay fresh in the freezer, it must be blanched to stop the enzymatic actions that lead to spoilage. Blanching is a process of heating, then rapidly cooling. This year, I used my corn scientist friend’s method. Drop the ears into boiling water for three minutes, transfer to an ice bath, then cut the kernels from the cob.

Again seeking efficiency, I put the raw corn next to the pan of boiling water with the ice bath bowl next to the boiling water. I can do ten ears at a time in the boiling pot and also in the ice bath.

After the ice bath, I moved that bowl to a place on my left, my work bowl, more about this later, in front of me and a cob bucket on the floor on my left.

My work bowl is a bundt cake pan set on a rimmed baking sheet. A bundt pan may seem like an odd work bowl for this task, but it is actually perfect. Each ear of corn is placed on its narrow end in the middle of the cake pan and, using an electric carving knife, I cut rows from the cob. The kernels fall into the well of the pan. After all kernels are removed, I can drop the cob into the bucket on the floor in the same motion as I am reaching for the next cob from the ice bath. After cutting the kernels from each ear, I start the next batch of ten in the boiling water bath. I leave the water boiling the entire time I am working and refresh the ice in the ice bath as necessary.

While the next batch is boiling, I have just enough time to label four freezer bags and load each with 2 cups of corn. I use this amount as most of my recipes or serving needs can adapt to this amount of corn. To fill the bags, first label while the bag is flat, then open it up in a tall plastic cup and fold the edge down around the rim of the cup. This allows me to easily fill the bag with minimal mess. Press out as much air as possible, seal and toss on a cookie sheet for transport to the freezer when all is done.

Even with this efficient method and trying to keep the mess contained, processing corn is a messy job. But in only one morning of work, I have all I need for the winter ahead. Meals of soups and chowders, fried corn and simply buttered corn as a side dish will be welcomed throughout the cold weather. And on Super Bowl Sunday we will have sweet tamale corn cakes like the appetizer at Cheesecake Factory.

Delicious.

Lessons Our Dads Taught Us

Living on a small farm requires skills.

Lots of skills.

We both love being as self sufficient as possible, but there are some things we don’t do, because we don’t have the tools, knowledge or strength.

From the time I (Julia) was a child, my dad taught me how to take things apart and reassemble. He was a do-it-yourself kind of guy, mostly because it was more economical. I’d like to think he enjoyed some tasks as well. Not once did he ever suggest that I should not do things because I’m a girl. He was ahead of his time in that regard.

One of his side hustles was to put together feeders for cattle from a kit, then sell the finished product to other farmers. I stood by his side, reading directions over his shoulder and handing him the correct parts. (A skill that came in handy later with Ikea furniture.)

Donna’s dad taught her the value of hard work and doing for yourself as much as possible. Later, he taught both of us how to take on a fixer-upper house. He spent many hours teaching us what we needed to know. Everything from installing siding and shingles to changing out windows and electrical outlets.

Now when a repair job or maintenance need comes up, we first consider if we can fix it.

Change an outlet or light switch. Yes.

Change the oil in a mower. Sure.

And now change an ignition coil in the riding mower.

Having a couple of acres to mow means riding mowers (yes, plural) need to be in running condition. When one of them was sluggish, we decided to investigate.

After disassembling the housing around the flywheel, we found the problem. A family of mice had taken up residence in the engine. Apparently, during their construction efforts, they got a little hungry for spark plug wires. The little beasties had chewed off half the insulation and right through the wire.

After a YouTube lesson, an Amazon order and a half hour or so of labor, the mower is back in service.

Another do-it-yourself task completed.

Plus, we saved time and money.

Our Dads would be proud.

Learning How Not To Name a Product and When To Go For It

One time an unconventional name really worked.

What is “Cat Burglar”?

The question has been posed to us more times than I can count. It usually goes something like this:

A customer to our small farm approaches the balm display and looks over the scents. They pick up one or two, check the scent label and try to arrive at a decision about what smells best to them. Then they pick up the one labeled “Cat Burglar”.

Yes, it is a bit of a different name. When we first started creating skin balms from the beeswax collected during the honey harvest, we tried to find unusual names. We created a line called “Phantom Balm” named for one of the cats in residence. The same logic applied to “Reine Balm”.

The questions rolled in with those names. We quickly learned that in business, cute creative names are one thing, but when the names are so obscure the customers do not know what they are purchasing, it is a problem.

As good entrepreneurs do, we stepped back and reassessed. Too many times we found ourselves answering about the contents of these little tins. As we repeated that we used the names of our cats, we began to realize the absurdity.

Time to rename the products simply. Straightforward so there is no confusion. “Phantom Balm” is not going to either treat your phantom or turn you invisible. It is a soothing balm for dry cracked skin.

So we rebranded all of the scented balms under our new “Gert‘s Garden Balm” line. The new name was not so confusing. It was easy for people to understand this is a brand name.

But one balm name stuck and we are always willing to tell the story of “Cat Burglar”.

Most people who use essential oil blends have heard the story behind the Thieves blend of oils.

The story goes when Bubonic Plague was rampant in the 15th century, a group of thieves went from house to house robbing from the dead and dying. Even after repeated exposure to the highly contagious plague, the thieves did not get sick.

At long last, the thieves were apprehended. After conviction, the thieves were offered leniency if they would reveal the secret to their plague resistance. They disclosed they used a blend of cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, and TK oil as a defense.

We have incorporated those same essential oils into our balm. In keeping with our feline named business and with a nod to the 15th-century robbers, we call our version “Cat Burglar”.

Just to be clear, this name came about well before the current pandemic ravaging the world. The story of the thieves’ protection from Bubonic Plague with essential oils is folklore. We make no representation that our Cat Burglar balm provides any protection from any disease, germ, or phobia. What we do know is the balm is soothing to dry, cracked skin, smells delicious, and has a cool name.

Now you know the story, you can order your own tin of Cat Burglar with the button below.

Cat Burglar Balm

$2.00 – $4.00

Buy now

Origin Stories Are The Best: We Reveal Our Signature Beek Balm Beginning

Have you ever had a happy accident? You know the kind…you forget part of something, like an ingredient in a recipe, but it turns out great anyway?

That happened to us with one of our signature products: Hint-O-Mint Beek Balm. It is an odd name for a lip balm, but that is a story in itself.

When we first started Five Feline Farm, we had two main ideas. Sell our excess produce and raise honeybees. The honeybees were for both pollination and honey production. During our first honey harvest, we discovered a great byproduct: beeswax.

All-natural beeswax is a small farm entrepreneur’s dream. When you have a micro-operation, you need to squeeze maximum benefits from minimum input. Beeswax fits that description.

To harvest honey from the hive, each frame is “uncapped.” This is simply cutting off the top layer of wax to expose the honey. Frames are spun in a centrifuge to extract the honey. The wax cappings are collected in a tub.

There are a few steps to prepare the wax for use. Drain out the remaining honey drips, melt, and strain give us a pure wax ready to use.

The first wax-based product we attempted was a lip balm. It didn’t take long to branch into skin balms, but those are a topic for another post.

The first step to creating our lip balm was to figure out the ingredients. We picked up a tube of a famous national brand (you know, the one that everyone uses the brand name to refer to all lip balms)—no ingredients on the label.

Odd, we thought.

Off to the internet for a search. After digging through many pages on the brand website, we understood why the label does not include the ingredients. There are too many to fit on a lip balm tube! Then very few ingredients in the list had easily pronounceable names. It sounded like an experiment in a top-secret science lab.

Plus, the first ingredient is petroleum.

Petroleum comes from crude oil. For those living near an oil field, you are familiar with the odor. It smells, well, chemical and a bit gross. If you have never been near an oil field, imagine a thick sludge that smells like a blend of petroleum jelly, used motor oil, and gasoline. All I could imagine was smearing that voluntarily on my lips.

Nope.

Time for a different formula. An all-natural formula. One whose ingredients would fit on a tiny balm tube label.

Eureka!, as they say.

We had an abundance of beeswax. All we needed was sweet almond oil, vitamin E oil, and a food-safe flavoring. We source sweet almond oil and vitamin E oil from high-quality sources. We started with our original honey flavor sourced from our hives for flavoring. Then quickly developed three other flavors: Spearmint, Hint-o-mint, and Peppermint.

About that happy accident.

We were whipping up a batch of Spearmint Beek Balm, and some distraction or another interrupted the flow. Whether it was a cat needing attention or a cool song on the radio, the measurement of pure Spearmint oil was affected. Only half the required amount went into the batch.

Oops.

After testing one of the tubes on ourselves, it wasn’t half bad. (Pun intended.) The name “Hint-O-Mint” was a perfect descriptor. It became a hit with only half the mint flavor of regular Spearmint. It is now second only to the original Honey flavor in sales.

Are you still wondering about the Beek Balm name?

We sought interesting and different names for our products early in the business. Something creative that would identify the product and become a signature name.

The conversation turned to product names during an evening of great food and wine with close friends at our favorite restaurant. The four of us batted around names for our natural lip balm invention. The discarded choices are lost to history, but we settled on “Beek Balm.” Beek is a double entendre. It can be short for “beekeeper” and an obscure reference to a person’s lips.

There you have it.

The complete origin story of Beek Balm, available exclusively through Five Feline Farm.