Olathe, CO

Say Corn, and They're All Ears in Olathe, Colo.

Shelling out money for a sweet corn harvest festival didn’t appeal to Olathe, Colo., residents who were struggling with a poor market for their barley and sugar beet crops.

But John Harold, a local businessman and farmer, convinced them a festival like the one his sister told him about in Zellwater, Fla., could boost the town of 1,600 and its new super-sweet strain of sweet corn. Ten years later, the Olathe Sweet Corn Festival on Aug. 4 is expected to draw 20,000 people. Festival proceeds have already helped build a 37-acre events and recreation park.

“The corn festival has become known nationwide,” says Bobbi Sale, festival director. “And it’s given people a sense of pride in their community.”

Not to mention introducing Olathe Sweet all over the country. Olathe Sweet, which is patented and trademarked, is so tender it has to be picked by hand and is shipped in an ice slurry mixture to keep it at maximum sugar content.

The farming community is north of the sawtooth San Juan Mountains where the resort towns Ouray, Telluride, and Durango beckon skiiers and mountain climbers. But agriculture, not tourism, still drives the economy on the fertile farming flats of the Uncompahgre Valley. Crops include onions, pinto beans, alfalfa, apples, cherries, sugar beets, and wine grapes, but Olathe Sweet is king.

The strain was developed by corn geneticist David Galinat, who moved his Mesa Maize research and production headquarters to Olathe about the time markets for sugar beets and barley crops were shrinking and farmers were looking for a new cash crop.

Galinat is widely recognized for introducing sugary-enhanced sweet corn to the international marketplace. He’s “probably one of the top three” sweet corn experts in the world, says festival promoter Harold.

Every winter, Galinat plants an off-season plot in Chile, but the bulk of his research is done in Olathe, where the sandy, loamy soil and the weather are perfect for the sweet corn, Harold says. “The cool nights bring the sugar up in the corn, and the sunny days bring out the sweetness, too.”

Nearly all the 35 million ears of the sweet corn handpicked each year are grown in a 15-mile radius of the town. “We ship it to Roanoke, Virginia, and Los Angeles, California, and all points in between,” Harold says. Corn even went to London’s Harrods department store.

The festival, now a division of the town’s government, is a major source of revenue for local nonprofit groups, whose members perform all the festival jobs.

“Last year nonprofit groups made over $45,000,” Sale says.

Throughout the one-day, family-oriented festival, there are old-fashioned contests such as ice-block sitting, corn husking and a corn-kernel-spitting contest. By far the most popular aspect is the all-you-can-eat sweet corn. Last year, farmers donated 70,000 ears that were boiled and roasted to perfection by volunteers.

As a spectator sport, it’s hard to top the corn-eating contest. Kernels fly when competitors line up on the stage, plowing through as many as 28 ears in 10 minutes. Techniques include the “typewriter” method—gnawing horizontally down the rows of corn—and the “rotary” method—twisting the ears along the teeth like a bandsaw blade.

The Olathe Sweet Corn Festival was named a Local Legacy through the Library of Congress in 2000. The Legacy project documents and celebrates everyday community folk traditions, making the information available over the Internet.

Sale says that was a fitting tribute to the festival.

“It gives people a chance to celebrate agriculture because we are an agricultural community, and it gives people ownership in the corn,” Sale says. “We have a name now. People know Olathe by the corn and by the corn festival.”

Laurena Mayne Davis is a writer in western Colorado.

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