The cold, wet spring has put Taber cornfields way behind, and southern Albertans may have to wait until nearly the end of August to crunch on a cob. All fingers are crossed the corn will be ready for Cornfest, scheduled for the Aug. 27 weekend.
"At Cornfest I think they're going to have to use corn flakes," said Garry Valgardson, owner of Valgardson Farms.
David Jensen, one of the owners of Jensen's Taber Corn, predicted the crop will be ready by the third week of August at the earliest, nearly a month behind schedule, as long as Mother Nature turns up the heat.
"We're usually on at the end of July," Jensen said.
"It should be up about waist high now but it's not even knee high," Valgardson said. "It's gotta get hot. The last two years we got hailed out and the two years before that I started on August the first and finished September the eighth. Last year, I never started until the 28th of August because of the hail. And the year before that it was the 24th."
But despite the late start and stunted growth so far, the crops are looking good.
"Ours is really nice," Jensen said. "We've got some of the nicest stands of corn that we've had any time but it's just behind. So hopefully, people want to eat corn in September."
This year is stacking up to be one of the latest starts for the corn harvest.
"I've had it around the 17th of August but never like this," Valgardson said.
"It's not this bad that I can remember. Many years ago it was so dry it wasn't very good but now it's too wet."
Even though growers like Jensen and Valgardson do not have the power to conjure sunshine at will, they can sympathize with people who are just waiting to have a corn cook-out.
"It's really discouraging because you know that people want it and there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to wait it out, I can't control the weather," Jensen said. "I've been getting phone calls, even five, 10 a day. It's discouraging when you have to tell them, 'Sorry, there's not going to be any until that date,' but what do you do?"
"All we can do is wait and see," Valgardson said.