How many cobs could a grower grow if a grower could grow cobs?

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Sunny South News

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Molnar Farms near Barnwell is a family operated 1,000-acre farm, growing 75 acres of Taber corn, 60 acres of pumpkins, and the rest in grain and alfalfa. On the south side of Highway 3, near Range Road 173, their corn stand is a neat little shack where seasonal vegetables are available for those who want to eat fresh and local. And who wouldn’t?

 Kyle Molnar took some time out to talk with Southern Alberta Newspapers about the operation and this year’s corn quality. He said that in a typical year, the aforementioned split of crop acres generally stays the same. However, the corn grows in rotation, moving from plot to plot. “We try to have four crops in between the corn, so we move it around. So, we have four years of space in between. It helps with yield and weeds and stuff like that,” he said.

 The 2024 growing was forecast as hot and dry, but after a slow start in the spring, conditions turned favourable, with more moisture than expected followed by hot, sunny days.

 “The spring was kind of rough because it was so cold and the corn really didn’t like that, so that pushed it back a bit and hurt our yield a little bit. But then we were lucky enough to get some rain, so that helped a lot with the water allocation thing going on,” he said, referring to the eight and nine inch allocations granted to irrigators.

 “In the spring we had moisture, which was nice because the last three years you basically planted it into dust. So that was a lot better. The cold definitely hurt it, but once it warmed up, then it took off. And it’s been pretty good. I would say it’s a pretty average year,” he said.

 The added moisture meant a drop saved in one place could become a drop added in another. “We grow a bit of grain also, and we were able to water that a little bit less, and then we moved the water from the grain onto the corn. It was lucky, and we probably wouldn’t have been able to do that if it didn’t rain in the springtime. The rain got the grain enough to get going and it helped a lot.”

 So, given the size of the plants, does most of the corn in southern Alberta have to be grown under irrigation? “I would say yes, if you want to crop,” he said. “I know some guys grow silage corn on dry land, but you’re not getting much. But as far as sweet corn, yeah, it has to be irrigated, or else you won’t have anything there with our desert over here.”

 There a number of ways that corn is harvested, and sweet corn is often harvested with a different combine than field corn, but Molnar Farms does it the old school way. “We hand pick all of our corn,” Kyle said, “We don’t like the machine. It does damage to it. I know the other guy uses machines, and then it beats it up pretty bad. So we hand pick all of ours.”

 He said the farm doesn’t grow silage corn, but thinks those who do grow it use a silage chopper that takes the whole plant in. “Whereas we just take the cobs off,” he said, and then explained what happens to the standing stalks after the cobs are harvested “We cut it down, and we bale it up, and we feed it to our cows. Dual purpose. That’s the other thing with the machine; it cuts the stock off and drops it on the ground,  so then you’ve just got to disk it in. Quite a bit more value out of our corn, putting it through the cows again, kind of like recycling in a way.”

 The final question about the corn cobs was in terms of units: If you hand pick 75 acres, how many cobs of corn do you think you’d get from that? (As an aside, do you, the reader, ever ask a quantitative question and then take a totally random guess at what the figure is going to be? It’s like guessing how many gumballs are in a dispenser. I did exactly this, and spitballed a guess of 75,000. In a sense, the base number was close, but the total was way off.)

 “About 78,000 dozen,” Kyle answered. That’s one way of phrasing a very large number. Another would be 936,000 hand-picked cobs of Taber corn. Enough to go around. In fact, if the roughly 17,000 people in the Town and M.D. had to rely solely on Molnars for their corn, everyone would still get 55 cobs each.

 “We strive to get the highest quality product we can, so we go the extra mile,” he said. “We could probably pick it with the machine, but yeah, it makes us stand out a little more than the other guy.”

 On the home front, Kyle’s mother Jan runs a pumpkin festival each fall at the farm on RR 173 where a petting zoo, kids games, and a u-pick pumpkin patch are all part of the fun leading up to Thanksgiving and Halloween. This year she opens on Fri. Sept. 20 from 4 to 7 p.m. and on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The festival runs on a weekend schedule for six weeks and is also open on Thanksgiving Monday.