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Getting Ready to Feast on Farmer Tracey Vowell's Signature Crop
Tracey Vowell grows a wide variety of crops, many of them artisan types, at her Three Sisters Garden farm in Kankakee, Illinois. Yet it is her sweet corn that many of her customers await most anxiously.
And now, at a relatively early time in mid-July, it's here. I received my first order of the year today (July 17), and as you can see in the photo above, Barb and I are going to be enjoying a lot of those sweet golden kernels for the next few weeks.
Big piles of sweet corn were Tracey's signature during her long tenure as a vendor at Chicago's Green City Market. She built such a loyal customer base that when COVID hit, she was able to pivot nimbly to home delivery in Chicago, and it proved so successful that she maintained a delivery-only model even after the crisis abated.
I don't want to suggest that you shouldn't buy corn at the farmers markets, because of course you should. But there are multiple reasons why I do most of my corn-buying from Three Sisters Garden.
The quality is almost always excellent.
When there is a problem with a crop — part of the vagaries of farming — Tracey is upfront about it with her customers.
Home delivery is a huge convenience, because corn is heavy and it's a chore to lug around if you're buying a lot of it.
I admire Tracey Vowell. There were hardly any fully women-owned farms in the region when she started Three Sisters Garden two decades ago after a first career in the culinary world. There still aren't many now. And she proved her resilience when she bounced back from a fire during the winter of 2022 that destroyed much of her equipment and stored crops.
So what else did I get in the market haul in the above photo? There are summer onions, summer squash, and okra (I love Cajun food, so I have designs for that).
I heartily recommend that you click the button below to visit Three Sisters Garden's e-commerce site and see if you live in one of their delivery zip codes.
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