MPR: The Roadside Sweet Corn Business

The Roadside Sweet Corn Business
By Mark Steil
July 17, 1998

The trickle of fresh, local, vegetables available in May turns into a torrent in June and a flood in July. Of all the produce sold by farmers and backyard green thumbs, sweet corn may be the most popular. We tracked the delicacy from field to market in one southwest Minnesota city.

THE AFTERNOON SUN BAKES A SMALL TRAILER parked curbside on a busy street inWorthington. It's the type of day when a few minutes in the sun doing anything breaks a sweat. But for all its misery, the heat has benefits too. Nancy Vortherms has just bought a dozen of them.

Vortherms: I love sweet corn.

Vortherms says its a family tradition.

Vortherms: My grandparents lived on a farm and we always picked sweet corn all the time, and I was raised on fresh vegetables, and I love to have it fresh. So when they're selling it out here I like to come out here and buy it from them.

This stand is owned by Pat and Cammie Dorn of Adrian. Cammie says sweet corn sells well everywhere.

Cammie Dorn: We sell down at the lakes and those people pull up in their Mercedes and Lexus' and say, "Oh, give me a few dozen," and then they'll usually give you a tip. It's not like that in our local area.

The price for a dozen ears is $4. She says the family hopes to make several thousand dollars from its nine-acre sweet-corn patch.

Cammie Dorn: We have some really good helpers and good kids that we can trust and so, that's everything. 'Cause, if you don't have the helpers and kids that you can trust and that are willing to spend long days in the sun, it would never work out.

Those kids are high schoolers the Dorns hire to pick the corn. Their work starts at daybreak, as a red, rising sun burns through a hazy sky.

They've been at work half an hour, and the morning dew covering every leaf and stalk and ear soaks their clothes. They snap off the ears and toss them into a scoop bucket mounted on a trailing tractor. High school junior Matt Konz says he and his partners spend about two hours every morning picking corn.

Konz: And I take pride in doing it because we get up at 6:00 every morning in this wet, muddy field to do this work for all these people in different towns and all that stuff like that.

This sweet corn is part of the tons of fresh vegetables grown on Minnesota farms each year. Some are sold curbside, others in farmer's markets or at grocery stores. At the Dorn's stand in Worthington, Dana Dirckson says there's a special attraction in buying direct from the farm.

Dirckson: I guess I expect it to be fresher. They supposedly pick it daily. Where as in the grocery store, God knows how long it sits there before it gets bought.

There's also time at the roadside stand to talk. "When did you pick this corn?" "Where's it grown?" "What's the name of this sweet corn variety?" This customer even had a joke about an elderly lady who complained $4 a dozen was too high a price for sweet corn.

Unidentified customer: She wanted to know how much would the young boy sell it to her for just one or two ears of corn. Well he thought about it and he thought "Well, ten cents. Yup, ten cents an ear, that's how much." And she says "Well good, I'll take 12."

The grain of truth in that story is that sweet corn peddling is a competitive business. Often the Dorn's find someone else selling across the street and on the next corner. Despite the competition, this day has gone well. The teenage pickers earned some money, the Dorn's made a profit, and some hungry people picked up a summertime treat.

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