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["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

I am also a "child of the corn."  I grew up on a Missouri dirt farm in the
fifties, only leaving there to join the navy out of high school.  We had
almost 200 acres of corn planted and rotated with soybeans.  My father was
some what progressive, we were early adopters of Diesel tractors, anhydrous
ammonia, and the many 'cides.  He sold Cargill hybrid seed corn planted
several plots of test corn every year.  Every fall we bought 20-30 head of
cattle to run in the fields and feed them silage in winter then sold them
off in spring.  We also feed corn to hogs and sold them.  This was then end
of the family farm and the beginning of industrialized agriculture.

My cousin farms about 1400 acres of corn on the Mississippi bottom land of
Northern Missouri.  His father also grew corn but sold very little as he
stored it and feed it to hogs for a value added.  By the late eighties
confinement feeding operations drove him out of the hog feeding business and
into increasing corn acreage.  My cousin lost most of his crop in this years
floods.

The Bowen's first moved to Missouri from Virginia sometime in the 1830s.
The Matlicks (my grandmother's and mother's family moved into the area with
them.  At one time they operated the stage coach stop on the Memphis to
Kirksville stage line.  The family grew Missouri Corn and raised Missouri
Mules until the Mule market ended then they grew corn up until my father
sold the farm.  My grandmother knew many ways of preparing corn.  Corn Pone,
Corn Dodgers, Corn Chowder, Corn Bread, Hominy, and some otheres I have
forgotten.  She was a strict Methodist and hated the thought of corn
whiskey. One of my favorite eats is Corn Bread with Sorghum Molasses.  

Don Bowen  KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html