This time of year, Donald Newhard’s mornings run like clockwork. Six days a week, a quarter after 5 a.m., you’ll find him exactly where he wants to be: in the seat of his tractor, picking sweet corn one row at a time.
“We love growing sweet corn,” Newhard says. “We’re not crazy about picking it in the dark, in the wet, and all of that.”
But the early hours pay off fast. A single wagon load, filled in about 20 minutes, holds roughly 300 dozen ears.
It isn’t just any sweet corn. In Coplay, Pennsylvania, situated the heart of the Lehigh Valley, Newhard Farms Corn Shed has become something close to a local institution. And the numbers back it up…