Transcript
Harbes05_SweetCornBiz
I learned that sweet corn is the largest-selling vegetable at a farm stand. And as a boy, I had a brief experience selling sweet corn. My father had raised a few rows of sweet corn for the family, and when it was time to sell, we put up a card table on the side of the road and a sign "Corn $1.50 a dozen." And I was 11 years old, and I sat out by the side of the road with a friend of mine and over the course of the next week or two, I think we made several hundred dollars, which seemed like a small fortune in those days. So, I thought I tried it as a child and I had a pleasant experience; let me try it as a man and see what I can do with the sweet corn business. So, I looked into the different varieties of corn available, and there was a variety called, well it was a type of sweet corn, called Super Sweet Corn. It was fairly new back in the 80's and not commonly grown, but I thought let me try that. It had a reputation of being sweeter than average. It also had a reputation of being more difficult to grow, which intimidated a lot of people from trying it and growing it on a regular basis. But I thought let me cut my teeth on this new type of sweet corn. So I spent a lot of time speaking with Cooperative Extension agents, as well as any other research I could find, research from seed companies about the Super Sweet Corn. I tried to pick the varieties that had the most potential and learn the cultural practices that would be required to successfully produce them. And that first year, I raised approximately 20 acres of sweet corn, and we sold it between the end of July and September and it was a humble beginning
