Jane Burns
Amy and John Whitehead of Cross Plains buy corn at the Statz family self-serve stand.
Faith in humanity can take many forms. In the summertime, it looks like an ear of corn.
On country roads throughout Dane County and beyond, corn stands that work on the honor system dot the landscape. Piles of sweet corn sit alone, kept company by a lockbox and, every once in a while, a kid whose family runs the pop-up business for a little extra cash.
“People are amazed, especially if they’re from Chicago or something,” says Eileen Statz, whose corn stand camps in the front yard of her family’s farm just off Highway 14 between Cross Plains and Black Earth. “They say, ‘Really? You let people help themselves?’”
Statz’s Supersweet Corn started up for the 22nd or 23nd year (the family isn’t quite sure) on July 22. On that first Saturday, plastic bins were chock full of small but tender ears of the season’s first corn. At $5 for a baker’s dozen or $2.50 for six ears, customers could just help themselves at the unstaffed stand. The next day, a Sunday, was a little busier so Statz grandchildren, 7-year-old Blake Vandenbergh and his sister Layla, 6, were on hand to help, just like their mom, Shelly, and her two brothers, Jeff and Anthony, did when they were kids.
“People will see me if I’m walking by the stand and say, ‘Are you that little blonde girl who used to sell me my corn?’” says Vandenbergh, now a nurse at UW Hospital who still shares corn-picking duties with her brothers and mom. A busy day will yield 80 dozen ears; the family picks from the end of July until after Labor Day.
Most highway stands are side businesses for farm families and often a way for their kids or grandkids to earn some money while also learning people and math skills. For the Statzes, sweet corn helped pay for the children’s education, then grown-up things like homes. Now the next generation is learning the business and saving for the future.
At first, the Statzes grew sweet corn because dealers would throw in seeds for it along with the seeds for the field corn being grown for animal feed (which is what makes up the majority of the corn crop in Wisconsin). The family grew enough sweet corn for themselves to eat and freeze.
“Somehow my father-in-law got carried away one year and we had way too much sweet corn, and he said, ‘Maybe the kids could sell it in the yard,’” Eileen Statz says.
They did, with her young sons wearing sandwich board signs to direct customers from the highway onto South Valley Road, where the Statz farm sits along Black Earth Creek.
First, the money was kept in a shoebox but that got wet. Then came a Tupperware container, and people could make their own change if the family wasn’t around.
“Then eventually the bills started disappearing so we started using a lockbox,” Eileen Statz says.
Most customers are regulars, a mix of locals and people who pass through each summer. Customers have shipped the corn as far as Alaska, and the Statzes have supplied corn for church and employee picnics.
Those loyal customers aren’t just fans of the corn, they’re protective of their favorite corn stand, too. A few years back a regular heard that the lockbox, which is bolted to the picnic table, looked as if it had been tampered with and wasn’t happy about that.
“He said he’d sit in the field across the road with a shotgun and watch it for us,” Eileen Statz said.
But those instances are rare. Most of the Statzes’ stories are as sweet as the corn that brings people back to their farm every summer.
“A couple years ago someone left me an IOU for 10 cents because they didn’t have enough money with them,” Eileen Statz says. “And the following weekend there was a note saying, ‘I left the 10 cents I owed you.’”
Renewing one’s faith in humanity for a mere dime. It’s a better deal than a baker’s dozen for $5.
3: Wisconsin’s U.S. ranking for production of sweet corn, trailing Minnesota and Washington. The states more traditionally associated with corn, including Iowa and Nebraska, are top producers of corn that goes to animal feed, ethanol and food products such as corn oil or cornstarch. The short season, cooler nights and cold winters that kill off pests make Wisconsin an ideal sweet corn environment.
80: Tons of sweet corn eaten at Sun Prairie’s Sweet Corn Festival each year. This year’s festival is Aug. 17-20 at Angell Park.
60,300: The number of Wisconsin acres dedicated to growing sweet corn, the bulk of which goes to processing plants for freezing or canning rather than farm markets. The figure pales in comparison to the 4 million acres of field corn grown in the state.
1953: Year “supersweet” corn was “discovered” at the University of Illinois to little fanfare or enthusiasm. It has slowly come to dominate the fresh corn market.
Colors: Many think there are three kinds of corn — white, yellow, and bicolor — and that sweetness depends on the color. It doesn’t. “It’s not the color, it’s the quality of the variety,” says Bill Tracy, a corn breeder and professor and chair of the agronomy department at UW-Madison. “Color doesn’t have any effect on quality.” There are sweeter varieties within all colors, he says.
Planting season: While field corn plants early and — ideally — dries in the field before a fall harvest, sweet corn is a young crop that needs attention. “I don’t know if farmers get enough credit for their sweet corn,” Tracy says. “They have to baby the crop for it to grow. It needs some care.”
