On Saturday, at the farmers’ market, I bought eight dozen (that’s 96) ears of corn , 20 pounds of tomatoes and 10 pounds of cucumbers. Yes, it’s that time of year again – work frantically to store up food for the winter!

Sweet corn is best eaten or processed as close to picking time as possible. So, Saturday after lunch, we started in on the mammoth project of husking, blanching, and cutting off all that corn.

Ellie loves husking corn (in theory) so she wanted to sit at the table and help too.

That quickly became boring (see “in theory” above) and so for awhile, she amused herself by watching the caterpillars that we found in a couple of the ears.

Thankfully, she was in a great mood so after the caterpillars got boring, she got down and  kept herself occupied as Nik and I husked and blanched and husked and blanched until finally that part was done by dinnertime.

all 96 ears, cooling, drying, and waiting to be cut off the cob

We got started again around 7:30 with the cutting and bagging. Finally, by around 10:00, the dining room floor was clean, the dishes were washed and almost 30 pounds of amazingly delicious sweet corn were in the freezer for the winter.

Then, we collapsed into bed.

Here’s my advice about ratios:  Sometimes, it’s not just the actual number that matters.  It’s the ratio of increase that really makes a difference.

Last year, we froze six dozen ears of corn.  It was a relatively easy job but we ran out pretty early.  This year I thought to myself, “Oh, I’ll just get a couple more dozen to make sure we have enough.” Well, two dozen ears of corn aren’t that many by themselves but that’s actually a third more than what we did last year.  It ended up being TOO much to do in one day.  Rather than doing it all at once next year, I think we’re going to split our corn adventure into two weekends and not exhaust ourselves quite so much.

P.S. Yes, yesterday we diced all the tomatoes and froze them and today I’m making pickles.  The work goes on!