West Branch Meeting First Annual Cooperative Corn Freezing Project

 

 

This summer will see the "West Branch Meeting First Annual Cooperative Corn Freezing Project"  We are concerned with the miles our food is coming from and feel this project will do a little something toward eating local food next winter and will acquaint many people with the problem our world is facing.

 

West Branch Meeting member, Ken Fawcett has planted corn for us.  When the corn is ready we will go as a group and pick it, then husk it, and prepare it for freezing.  For members who do not have freezer space we are looking into having a freezer at the meeting house.  For people who can't come on the work day, we are figuring out the price of a one pound bag of corn and those people will buy their corn and the people who work will get some money back.  At this point we have 12 families who want 270 bags of corn.

 

To get this project going we first sent a questionnaire to everyone in meeting asking about their concern for climate change and their interest in a corn freezing project.  Don Laughlin wrote up his ideas about local food and how we could at least have tasty Iowa corn for next winter.  I've included his observations below.  Then we took some time from our query discussion one first day to discuss it and then brought it up again at the next business meeting. 

 

We think this is a situation where everyone wins.  There is no match for fresh frozen Iowa corn in the middle of February.  And we think the idea will spread.  At least in our household we are thinking of preserving beans and strawberries.

 

Here are Don's thoughts:

 

I have an organic farmer friend who believes that all our food should be raised within 50 miles of where we live.  If this were  possible it would have an immense impact on our way of life.  In general, it would be revolutionary.

 

I am also increasingly concerned about climate change and my personal impact on the upper atmosphere.  These two thoughts connect with each other when I wonder how many gallons of diesel fuel and jet fuel are needed to bring a summer-time diet to a city like Iowa City throughout the whole winter.  As we face very high fuel prices and eventually the scarcity of liquid fuel in addition to the fact that we must wean ourselves from carbon fuel I ponder what I can do personally to begin to correct our current state of affairs.  I think our lifestyle will  need to change.  But I think a major change won't hurt us; in fact, I think it will be enjoyable.

 

I grew up on a farm in the thirties and our winter diet was  actually 95% "grown within 50 miles".  In fact it was grown within 500 feet of our house!!  It was a healthy and nutritious winter diet.  But it was a lot of work.  But there was a lot of community, too and that fooled us into forgetting that the work was hard.

 

I am interested in performing an experiment this summer.  A locally grown summer diet is easy with Community Supported Agriculture programs, farmer's markets and personal gardens so available.    A locally grown winter diet is  more of a challenge.  I propose a group planting of sweet corn, a one day community gathering in late July or early August, when the corn is ripe, to pick, husk, blanch, cut off the cob, and package for freezing.   We have several members in our Meeting who know exactly how to do such. 

 

Everyone involved would get their winter's supply of sweet corn and we would all have fun.  And the flavor of frozen Iowa sweet corn in the winter is out of this world. 

 

Don Laughlin