ray rex and joe rex four rexes farm corn.jpg
Ray and Joe Rex grow 140 acres of sweet corn at Four Rexes Farm in Hadley.
(Mary Serreze photo)
HADLEY -- This season's sweet corn is running about a week late, but after a somewhat cold and challenging spring, the crop is now looking "very nice," according to a local wholesale grower.
Ray Rex and his son Joe were found washing a batch of cucumbers at Four Rex Farm on West Street Sunday afternoon. "You should have been here at 7 a.m.," said Rex. "We had about 40 high school students here picking corn."
Corn thrives when temperatures and humidity rise, he said -- "just the sort of weather you don't want to be working in."
The Rex family grows 24 varieties of corn on 140 acres. The farm's biggest customers are farm stands from eastern and central Massachusetts. Some retail customers drive to the farm every day to pick up the produce themselves, Ray Rex said.
Locally, the Pioneer Valley Growers Association, a growers cooperative, distributes corn from Four Rexes and other farms to grocery stores and restaurants.
Ray Rex emphasized that corn is at its best when fresh-picked. "You don't want it to be sitting around for days, because the sugars will very quickly start to covert to starch."
When you pick sweet corn fresh, you can eat it raw, said Joe Rex: "That's what a lot of the kids do when they're working in the field."
Father and son said they were grateful for the fine, rock-free Hadley Silt Loam at their farm, and that they amend their corn fields with compost and a basic 10-10-10 fertilizer on a yearly basis. They keep bees on the farm year-round.
Aside from corn, Four Rexes Farm devotes another 60 acres to vegetable and melon crops. "We're trying seedless melons for the first time this year. They're a little tricky," said Ray Rex. "Come back in August."
In related news, retired farmer Bill West, who sells Four Rexes corn at his Bay Road farmstand, noted that it's been a good year for hay.
"It was dry in May and we cut early," he said. "Then we got a good second crop in June."
The sweet corn enjoyed at backyard barbecues is different from cow corn, which is often grown in rockier fields. The cow corn is generally chopped and silaged to feed dairy cattle through the winter, said West.
Mary Serreze can be reached at mserreze@gmail.com