Every goal starts with a dream. The Boss’s dream is to grow 300 ears of corn in one season. To date, he has not reached this goal. Over several decades, he has come as close as 280.

He has tried various techniques to obtain the illustrious 300-ear year. He has experimented with timing – two separate plantings versus three plantings. He devised the corn-planting stick to ensure that every kernel is planted with exact spacing to maximize production. He knows which seeds he needs to order for the best tasting sweet corn that will grow in our microclimate. Sometimes Mother Nature has the final call.

This season wasn’t looking so good from the start — he ordered the wrong seed. Oops.

Upon realizing his mistake, he relegated the corn to the “smaller beds” (10 feet long instead of 12 feet long). Fewer corn seeds germinated. The 300-ear-season wasn’t looking so promising in early June.

Knee high by the fourth of July? Ha! Try ankle high. But the Boss carried on, weeding, transplanting and caring for his stunted corn crop.

Before you feel bad about the Boss missing his goal, let me remind you that he still grows a butt load of corn for only two people.

Why 300? He told me I can’t write about the 300-ear-year unless I really understand all the nuisances. When he started hurling numbers, measurements and fractions at me I glazed over. (Left-brained gardener talking to right-brained semi-gardener.)

Rick is a hearty corn eater.  Like, eight ears-a-night hearty (this is down from the 10 – 12 he used to be able to handle). For the six weeks of corn season, he eats only corn for dinner. Problem is, corn season is also BLT season, green bean season, beet season, stuffed pepper season. I just can’t eat that much corn without feeling like a corn-fed heifer. My limit is two and that allows me to still appreciate sweet corn six weeks into eating corn for dinner every night.

So much food. Abundance is ours!

By the end of August and all through September, Rick was on his daily corn diet of eight ears per night. We froze several quarts and there is still a stack of frozen corn getting freezer burnt from last year. No one is going to starve from lack of sweet corn.

The grand total for the 2018 season is . . . 187! It is time to put the butter boy away. “And now,” the Boss says with mouse traps in one hand as he proudly makes a few notches on the calendar, “It is on to mouse season.”