Nothing says summer quite like this: Local sweet corn hits farm stands

It’s Independence Day and that means one thing for locals — besides fireworks: corn.

Sweet. Local. Corn. Really local. As in grown-right-down-the-road local.

Even though spring was late to arrive and the weather’s been sort of quirky — with some unusually cool nights along the way — the corn crop has come in for Riverhead’s local farmers known to have first-of-the-season picks each year.

The Rottkamp family of Baiting Hollow started picking corn on Sunday and the Andersons of Riverhead began harvesting today.

“We thought things would be late this year, but those few 80-degree days brought things around and seemed to catch us right up,” Faye Anderson said this morning at her family’s farm stand, the last one still standing on Route 58.

They brought in strawberries at the usual time earlier this month. “But we were nervous about the corn because of those cool nights we had,” Anderson said. “It’s Mother Nature. You take it as it comes.”

Along with their first corn harvest, the Andersons opened their farm stand for the season today. It will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Lolly Rottkamp, proprietor of Fox Hollow Farms on Sound Avenue in Calverton said their wholesale business has been very busy today.

“Everybody wants corn,” she said.

The Rottkamps just this morning started picking a new variety they planted this year, she said. “It looks great. It’s beautiful.” Sometimes early corn can be a little disappointing, she said. “But this looks very nice.”

Both families have been farming locally for many years and currently farm about 200 acres apiece. Lolly began farming with her husband Jacob in Baiting Hollow in 1966. The son of German immigrant farmers in Astoria, Queens, Jacob had been farming in his wife’s hometown of East Northport before the couple moved east. Today their son Jeffrey runs the family farm.

Richard Anderson began farming with his father “before he could walk,” his wife said. “He was a Future Farmer of America long before he went to high school and joined the club,” she laughed. The Andersons’ son Rodney works on the farm full-time, she said. It’s a family operation, with other children and grandchildren pitching in when needed. Her sister’s granddaughters work at the stand, too, she said.

Customers were arriving this morning even before the Andersons had a chance to put their “LOCAL CORN” sign out by the road.

“Everybody looks forward to the first corn of the season,” Anderson said with a smile. “Nothing says summer quite like it.”