A Family History
When I was between five and ten years old, my mother, Rob and I would come over to Grandmother Spencer’s farm (where we now live), to join Aunt Anna and Doris, her daughter, to freeze sweet corn. Granddad Spencer would pick the corn, pile it on a wagon hitched behind an ancient garden tractor, and bring it under the shade of a tree near the garden. Then he and all the children would husk and silk the corn. Grandmother, in the meantime, would cover the kitchen floor with newspapers and start several kettles of water to boil in the house. The women would then scald the corn, cook it in a large sink filled with cold running water and then bag it up for the freezer. When they needed more corn, Grandmother would step out the back door and loudly yell “CARN!” That meant we were to get more corn to the kitchen immediately!
My mother continued this tradition and much corn was processed in the old Slemmons farmhouse. She had a specific method for cutting the corn off the cob, holding it horizontally in her hand and cutting towards herself but this was not easy for others to do.
Once Anne and I took over the processing, we decided to do as much as possible outside, minimizing the mess indoors. We used a propane fired burner and a turkey kettle to boil the corn, a large tub and hose to cool the corn, and an outdoor table for cutting off the corn. We bag it up outside, only then going inside to put corn in the freezer. We have frozen anywhere from 40-120 packages each year over the past 35 years when the corn is at its peak
–Dad
Spencer Family Cookbook 