A few weeks back, we met C’s dad, Jeff, to drive up to his friend’s farm in Brighton.  Jeff has a goose blind on the farm property and has been friends with Bob for many years.

I’ve been wanting to check Bob’s farm out ever since C brought home a 10-pound bag of onions after hunting geese there with his dad.  They were basically the best onions I’ve ever had.  We ate them for weeks and each one was perfect.

I knew the farm was big, but I didn’t realize it was 3,000 acres big.  The farms I know in Columbia County and the Hudson Valley are generally a few hundred acres – if that (mix in a lot of dairy and orchards).  The biggest farm I know about in the county I grew up in is Samascott Orchards – coming in at a whopping 1,000 acres.

Right now, Sakata Farms is finishing up the harvest of their delicious sweet corn.  It’s a bumper crop this year.  We rode out to the field that had been harvested Saturday morning and ate raw corn off the stalk (C is still thrilled by this!)  It was delicious.  No butter or salt needed.

Our visit reminded me of stopping by Gould’s farm in the late summer with my dad and brother as kids and picking corn from Gordy’s field.  We were dwarfed by the large corn stalks in the small field he had planted near the road, for his friends and family to pick at their leisure.

Bob Sakata is a Renaissance Man for certain.  He’s in his mid-eighties but is the brains of the operations behind an incredible business.  Sakata ships pinto beans to Mexico, corn to Saint Louis, sells feed to elevators that ship all over the world.  Locally, he sells produce to Safeway and King Soopers, but you can find his corn as far away as Maryland.

I did make sure to ask him if he’s ever sold corn in upstate New York.  ”That market’s covered,” he said.  Oh yes, it most certainly is!

Cheers to a happy corn season!