14 AUGUST 21-27, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | and barley crops,” he says. “The community attempted broccoli, lettuce and a sweet corn variety from a local seed grower.” Eventually, “together with other com- munity members and farmers,” he adds, “they helped launch Olathe sweet corn from our valley.” Going to market Sweet corn has gone nationwide over the years. “We actually ship all the way to Virginia Beach, and then we go to L.A., so we go coast to coast,” says Fishering. “We have, you know, twelve different grocery chains, they’ve been with us for thirty-odd some years, including Kroger.” Whole Foods Market also buys Olathe sweet corn, he notes. Sweet Corn is grown in many states; Colorado competes with Ne- braska, California, Wisconsin and Indiana, but this state’s sweet corn has particular fans. In the Uncom- pahgre Valley, 23 families grow sweet corn. According to CSU’s Western Colorado Extension bulletin, sweet corn production added up to ap- proximately $11.8 million last year with just 4,000 acres planted. Over a million acres of corn were planted in Colorado, the U.S. Department of Agriculture numbers show. As he walks through his opera- tion, Fishering explains that the harvest has been slow this season. “We don’t know what it was with the weather, but the corn has been a little delayed this year,” he explains. So ev- ery day, he walks through his acreage, check- ing on the crop. While farmers have no control over weather, they’re ac- customed to adjusting their o p e r a t i o n s to deal with Mother Nature. Members of his crew, which includes labor- ers and mem- bers of their families who’ve worked for the farm for decades (mostly immigrants, but all with legal documentation, he notes), manually inspect all the corn as it arrives from the fi elds for worms, then send it to a packing area to be placed into boxes, chilled with crushed ice, then stacked and loaded into trucks for drives around the country. Fishering and Ahlberg can tell from expe- rience which plots are ready to be harvested. “It is nothing for Mike and I, because we’re constantly going out and checking out our next three sets of fi elds to know where we stand in terms of what’s going to be the next one we’re going to pick,” Fishering says. “So it’s coming out of the fi eld, and then it’s on this conveyor there.” The goal is to get the corn to its destina- tion in a matter of hours, to preserve its maximum sweetness. Despite the challenges, Fishering is happy to be able to deliver sweet corn to the con- sumers who crave it every summer, and to stick around for what could be a better haul next year. He has the farmer’s eternal opti- mism for the next season, the next crop. “You know, the future is yet to be determined,” Fishering concludes. “I mean, I think we’re a pretty resilient bunch.” The Olathe Sweet Corn Festival runs from 9 a.m. “til the cows come home” on Saturday, August 23, at the Montrose Rotary Amphitheater in Ce- rise Park; fi nd more information at olathesweet- cornfest.com. Cafe continued from page 13 Sweet corn from Tuxedo Farms in Olathe displayed at King Soopers in Denver, part of the Kroger chain. Mountain Quality Farms in Delta harvesting sweet corn to be trucked within hours to the state’s Front Range. GIL ASAKAWA GIL ASAKAWA LEND KVNF AN EAR It’s Olathe sweet corn season, and one of the most rewarding ways to eat this vegetable — besides just biting into a raw ear — is to take the kernels and make Sweet Corn Salad from a two-paragraph recipe provided by Tuxedo Corn, one of the largest and best-known growers of sweet corn in Colorado. That recipe is included in Cookin’ with Jazz, a compilation of recipes from farmers, local businesses and listeners of KVNF, a Paonia-based community station that be- gan broadcasting in 1979, and whose signal reaches Delta, Montrose, Ridgway, Ouray, Lake City, Nucla, Norwood, Grand Junction and throughout the Grand Valley. Cookin’ with Jazz is named after the sta- tion’s weekly show of the same name, which is hosted by Bob Pennetta, DJ REMAY and Lisa Jae on Friday nights. “It’s a really cool Western Colorado food record,” says Ashley Krest, KVNF’s general manager. It’s a record in a musical sense, too. Many of the book’s recipes include a QR code that links to playlists curated by the station’s personalities. The playlist for the very fi rst recipe, “Pennetta Kick-Ass Granola,” for instance, suggests musical accompaniment put together by station host Geitz Romo that includes Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Weather Report and more. One recipe that doesn’t have a QR code is still linked to music: Raspy-voiced British blues and rock singer Joe Cocker lived on the 243-acre Mad Dog Ranch in Crawford, just a few miles from Paonia, and his widow provided KVNF with the recipe for one of his favorite dishes, Joe Cocker’s Shepherd’s Pie. “Joe loved his shepherd’s pies!” Pam Cocker says in the cookbook. “When we were home off the road in Crawford, I would make it for him once a week, and when he was on the road touring, he had his caterers prepare this recipe every show day!” The book is chockful of other great reci- pes and food stories (and great music to hear while you make the dishes). You can cook up Shakin’ Fried Chicken from Mountain Bird; Bison Short Ribs, Barley Risotto and Blue Corn Bread from White Buffalo Restaurant; and Vegetarian Lasagna with Tempeh from Donna Littlefi eld, which was served by the Bettys, a booster group, at the station’s an- nual meetings back in the day. The original cookbook is available in area bookstores for $35; it’s also used as a gift to promise donations during on-air fundraisers. But will the station be able to publish an- other edition? According to Krest, the project was funded primarily by one anonymous donor. But now she’s worried about the fu- ture of the station and funding of community media in general, since Congress recently repealed $1.1 billion in already-approved funds for the Corporation for Public Media. CPB is responsible for distributing grants to public media stations, both radio and television; in 2026 there will be zero dollars allocated for those grants. “What it means for KVNF is a concerted effort to fi nd $161,000,” Krest says, citing the amount slashed from the budget by the feds. “That’s 20 percent of our annual budget last year. It’s not a small amount, when you consider our service territory. I mean, we have 136,000 potential listeners in our ser- vice territory. We cover 10,000 square miles of very rural, under-populated places, and not your typical Colorado ski town, resort community, wealthy population.” So even if that big donation that paid for the cookbook comes in again, the funds might have to go toward operations. “We may now need to funnel special project funds like that toward fi lling this gap that has been created by the recent vote to take away and claw back our two years of appropriated funding,” Krest notes. KVNF is determined to fi nd alternate avenues to keep projects going. “I really feel sad for the smaller stations, you know, like in Alamosa and Farmington, New Mexico,” Krest says. “I’m not sad for KVNF. I mean, it’s going to hurt and it’s going to be hard, but we’re here. We’re an institution. We’re not going anywhere. But I do see these smaller stations being challenged.” — Asakawa KVNF is located in the center of Paonia’s main street. KVNF’s “Cookin’ with Jazz” cookbook is a gift for donations to the station.
