THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 5, 1995 TAG: 9507050145
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Between now and the end of July, a cornucopia of vegetables and fruits will be tumbling into the markets and handy roadside stalls of Hampton Roads and Eastern North Carolina.
The harvest started trickling into a few markets last week.
``Summer is icumen in!'' the poet sings.
So let it roll.
And, believe me, we will be in the heart of summer, the thick of the growing season, during the last three weeks of this July.
The living will be easy for those of us hereabouts where choice farms still flourish - and always will, we pray.
The knowing ones among consumers began getting butter beans and corn and tomatoes last week. Home-grown cantaloupe are only 10 or 12 days away.
There are those of us to whom Silver Queen corn, the first startling advance among modern-day hybrids, will always be supreme.
The thing with Silver Queen is that you must eat it as soon as possible, while it is still fresh.
But there are even newer varieties of corn, sugar-enhanced, that will retain their fresh taste a week or more if they are socked away on the regular shelves of the refrigerator.
In buying Silver Queen corn at local farms, you were always aware of the time's brevity, its heels spurring your sides.
Once, venturing into a pick-your-own field of corn, I pulled a couple dozen green-clad ears from the rustling stalks, thrusting them into a sack, and, aware of the need to get them into the boiling pot pronto, was hot-footing out of the field, on a dead run, when I fell over a harrow.
It was a harrowing experience.
You need not make such haste with the latest breeds of corn.
Just dog trot, not even canter, much less gallop.
My impression had been that the crops might have been endangered by recent rain, but farmer John Williams assured me Tuesday that this time of year, when things are growing apace, we generally need rain.
It can rain every day in a corn field, he said. ``Corn likes water.''
An inch of rain a week is not a bit too much in the growing season, he said.
A long deluge two weeks hence would be a disaster. So a farmer has to keep a cautious eye on the weather. It's apt to turn too dry or too wet.
``I can remember only one year when we didn't have to irrigate a single time,'' Williams said. ``It just rained Sunday afternoon or Sunday night so it didn't even interfere with business and it made things grow.
``Once in 40 years the weather was perfect.''
Finishing this meandering among corn, as twilight nears, I hear that we should go outside to raise the windows in cars.
Maybe farmers will be getting just what they need. One hopes. by CNB