Food for thought

Rows and rows of six-foot-high cornstalks stretch over the valley, silhouetting a cloudless, crisp blue sky not yet touched by the sun.

The sounds from within hit the senses first: rustling underbrush, distant laughter, yelled commands and squishy, squeaking rips - like pieces of styrofoam rubbing together - of corn separating from stem.

Then you see them: heads bobbing through the foot-wide rows, disappearing and reappearing every few seconds.

Six workers in rain overalls shuffle back and forth among 3 acres of corn at Heron Pond Farm in South Hampton, N.H., dipping to pick, then dropping the cobs into large plastic buckets. As they work, dew-covered stalks leave scraggy, muddy fingerprints on their legs.

After 45 minutes of culling, the men accumulate a mound of corn that will later be distributed to area schools through a "Get Smart, Eat Local" Farm to School program facilitated by the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Through the initiative, Heron Pond regularly provides produce to 27 schools - comprising 15,000 students - in Portsmouth, Exeter, Newmarket, Hampton, and Hampton Falls, N.H., among others. Somersworth-based Saunders Fruit Co. distributes most of the vegetables, which so far have included zucchini, corn, summer and butternut squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and spring lettuce.

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