(relaxing country music) ♪ The Farmer is the man ♪ ♪ The Farmer is the man ♪ ♪ Farmer is the man ♪ - Good.

(water hose spraying) (soft country music) (bins moving) Man, we haven't had a good rain in probably three weeks.

I got beans that are flowering and I got beans that are still in the ground, not even came out of the ground yet.

Yeah, a nice rain would be good.

We've been irrigating over there, this stuff we've been irrigating too.

But yeah, pretty much we're hoping for a rain.

I'm going to start doing my rain dance.

That's why corn has like a funnel with the leaves, it loves to drink wide open mouth.

Yeah, we really could use at least a minimum of two inches.

I wouldn't be mad if it poured hard, if we could get two inches, would let the corn...

The corn would probably grow four or five inches like in a day or two.

But for right now we just, we got what God can give us and hopefully he can give us a little bit more.

(tractor reversing) You're almost going there.

Yeah, go that way.

Okay, okay, stop.

(metal pins clinking) This is the first stuff we planted.

This is...

This one acre here, maybe an acre and a half, used to be a cow pasture.

So all the cow, all the dry cows used to go out here, it's really fertile, there's not a lot of soil here actually, to be honest with you.

But it's really fertile ground and it's really soft.

We planted this at 28,000 seeds an acre, 300 pounds an acre of fertilizer and this is our first stuff, it's peaches and cream.

It doesn't have a lot of drought problems right now.

We have... We did irrigate it as you can see the gun out here in the middle.

We did irrigate it for a few days, but we've been getting little bits of rain, thunder showers here and there.

Not a lot of rain but you know, we'll get a 10 minute downpour and then...

But it's enough to keep it looking green.

So pretty much right here, as you can see, we got some tasseling going on so this is great.

So after tassels it's a couple more weeks and then she's good to go.

This looks like a great crop, I wish it all looked like this but this will probably be one of our best fields right here.

This will be probably ready right around August, I'm hoping.

This is where I'm hoping to make a good ton of money off just this bit here.

This looks really good, I'm happy with this.

We're dealing with very high input costs.

You know urea's a thousand bucks a ton or more, potash, 13, 14, 15, 1,600 bucks a ton and those are the kind of fertilizers that are pretty much essential, those three.

You kind of need them, if you're going to plant any kind of crop of corn, you need... Oh, you need it.

So we got the high fertilizer, we got high fuel price.

This year's corn crop is not going to be, I don't think as bountiful as last year's corn crop.

But this year's corn crop, I'm going to sell it for probably $8 a dozen instead of the $5 a dozen from last year because cost have gone up.

Down here is pretty much, it's still wet.

It rained last night for probably 20 minutes.

I do like Haldiman clay, I'm used to this type of dirt.

Over in the Simcoe grounds out there, you can have a worn out drill, it don't matter, 'cause the seed just goes in the ground, it will grow.

You can spit it out of your mouth, it'll still grow.

Out here in the clay, your stuff has to be put together good.

Now we're going to head out now and take a look at the other corn, and yeah, see how that looks.

A little bit drought like, they're a little bit crunchy the leaves here.

Hold on, pause my mom, it's okay.

Let me call...

Mom?

Hey mom, can I call you back?

Okay, good morning, bye.

My mom, there.

So here's my poorest corn field, looks like garbage.

I don't even know if we're going to get anything off of this.

It just didn't rain.

It just didn't rain and they just took forever to come out of the ground and that's literally it, it just didn't rain.

To be honest, I don't even know if these cobs are going to make it.

I might sell these things, they might be little dinky cobs, appetizer cobs.

(calming country music) This kind of business with sweet corn is kind of a test, you got to test it out.

You got to test it, right?

Like you might not make much money the first two, three, four, five, maybe even six years.

It's not something that you just put it in the ground and "Oh, I made money."

Right, like it's a sensitive crop.

(tractor engine revving) (spout spraying) - This is our third year doing sweet corn and our kid is two and a half so it's been kind of...

I've been a little bit distracted.

I would like to see the sweet corn as just a supplemental income for the farm, so I don't want to see all our focus going into sweet corn.

These are miniature horses and we have three, we have Pixie, Peaches, and Pepper.

Pepper is the new foal, she was just born this spring.

I think having the self-serve is great.

I think being able to sell right from the farm is fantastic and maybe down the road we can offer some different crops as well.

So this is Peaches and Pepper.

There is no work-life balance, it's all work so it's...

The farming is not a job, it's a lifestyle.

So it took me a long time to come to terms with that.

That was a big area of conflict for us in the beginning when we first got settled.

'cause I'm like, "Why aren't you home?

Let's, you know, do projects on the house."

But it's always the farm, yeah.

So my sister, she's been a really great help in the summertime, she's a teacher, so she's available in the summer.

(wind whistling) - I am going to look for corn smut, which is a fungus that infects corn, but it's actually edible.

It's used in Mexican cuisine and it even dates back to the Aztecs using it for cooking.

So I'm going to try to collect some, I've never collected it before.

Hopefully, I collect the right stuff and then make some recipes with it.

I've been doing some research on corn smut, which is also known as huitlacoche in the Aztec language.

It originates in central Mexico and it's been eaten there for hundreds of years.

In the research I've done, I have found that you can actually eat this and it makes delicious tacos so that's what I'm going to make today.

What you want to look for are these nice plump galls.

They can vary in size, so we have some nice small ones here and then we have larger ones here.

They're nice and firm and quite silky still.

When they burst, you'll see the powder and that are... That's the fungus spores so you don't want to eat those.

So the fungus infects the kernel, it starts off small and then they will get larger.

When you're looking for good ones to cook, you want to look for black inky texture on the inside like this instead of the powdery residue we saw earlier in the older, dry cobs there.

This can be rough chopped, we're just going to fry it, and then put it in a taco.

All right, I'm going to start by melting some butter.

You can use any oil you want but I like butter, (utensils clinking) (calming country music) I am going to cook the onions until they are translucent.

Then I will add the huitlacoche and I have some chopped up garlic to add as well.

(pan sizzling) I'll turn the heat down to medium, add the garlic.

I didn't add the garlic at the beginning with the onions because I didn't want it to burn so I'll add it now.

And I will also add a little bit of Poblano pepper that I've chopped up, I won't make it too spicy.

So right now I'm smelling the garlic, I'm smelling the onion and it's a very earthy, just full-bodied smell.

So I definitely cook it about five minutes, I usually...

I tend to overcook any fungus that I forge for, just to make sure.

You don't want it to get too dry, but you also don't want it to be too wet.

(Erika savoring) That's good, nice.

I picked this fresh this morning, so that makes a big difference.

All right, we're going to plate these up now.

So I have some warmed up tortillas, huitlacoche, I have some lacto-fermented lime here that I made up, it's just lime and salt and you let it sit for a few months.

That's not traditional, it's just something I like, it's delicious.

Then we'll have a little cilantro and that is that.

All right, and here we have our huitlacoche tacos, which are made from a fungus that grows on sweet corn.

It would normally be thrown out by people like Shane, who is a sweet corn farmer but you can make a meal from it.

And since all of you have just been watching me make these, I think it's time for you to try them.

- [Crew Member] Okay, let's give it a go.

- Cheers.

- That's really good.

- Nice kick.

- That's very good, guys.

- Love this job, thanks, Erika.

(rain falling) - Well, we got rain, that's the big thing.

We got a lot of rain.

We got about four or five good days of rain, half inch to an inch.

I think the one day we got one inch, every other day we got about half an inch.

These are the early varieties that are tasseling and they're about three weeks out.

Middle of August, probably the doors will open or the drive will be open for customers come in and buy.

Yeah, it's going pretty good.

Right here is a good one here.

(corn ears ripping) It's nice to have them the same length because then it's consistency is nice.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like if you're getting all the nice same cobs, it sucks when you get a good cob, cob, cob, then a good cob, then an okay cob, then a good cob.

It's nice when they're all just good.

We got to cut wheat, get that done.

Pretty busy, haven't had time to, you know, go out much and get sweet corn or anything like that but I'll probably just eat my own corn.

(Shane laughs) (relaxing country music) (relaxing country music continues)