When I volunteered to provide corn on the cob for the Community Picnic on behalf of the Galiano Emergency Program, little did I realize how much was involved. It wasn’t just a matter of arranging for the purchase of the corn – it was also planning for the shucking, cooking, and serving of the ears, as well as arranging for disposal of the cobs and husks.

Well, thanks to the experience and resourcefulness of Janice and Alison, I now know about bringing tarps and getting the children to make the corn shucking into a contest, arranging for BIG pots and cooks (of any size) for cooking, having runners available to scoot the shucked corn to the cooking pots as quickly as possible, getting the delicious cooked corn into people’s tummies equally rapidly, and recycling the husks and cobs into compost Buying the corn is definitely the easy part! In addition to Janice and Alison, my heartfelt thanks go to the Daystar Market (suppliers of the sweetest corn imaginable), Mary and Don Thomson (scooters extraordinaire), Eileen Beaudine (contest super-organizer and official cob counter), Dana Weber (brilliant not only with baking wonderful bread but with cooking corn to perfection as well) and Barry New (community compost expert).

After all the corn scurrying was over, we were all able to sit down and enjoy a fabulous potluck with super pesto and/or salsa and chips, devilled eggs, fabulous salads, eggplant casseroles, macaroni casseroles, rolls, pies, cookies, berries, homemade ice cream, and a whole bunch of other things that were gone before I even got there ☺ The empty plates were dead giveaways of truly tasty concoctions. And all through this, we had great music provided by Jenny Brooklin alternating with Greg Gammon. But I think that everyone would agree that the activity which topped everything was the Great Zucchini Race, emceed and conducted by Thomas Schnare and capably judged by Dave Ages and Mike Hoebel. The engineering, creativity and just plain fun were unbelieveable.

Well done organizers – I can hardly wait until next year!