Les Pahl: corn lover, farmer, friend

IT IS SWEET corn season, Les Pahl's favorite time of the year.

Les was a farmer who, until his death late last month at the age of 48, sold fruit and vegetables at a number of Baltimore area farmers' markets.

His pride was sweet corn. Customers would line up to buy his corn, sometimes forming a makeshift queue before his truck parked in its usual spot in a market.

He not only grew corn, he devoured it. "He would eat six to 10 ears of corn for supper," his wife, Pam, told me.

In an afternoon drizzle he would have regarded as a good "planting rain," I was one of many mourners who made their way to the funeral home in southern Carroll County to pay respects to Les, who had battled cancer for the last 1 1/2 years. A small tractor, a replica of his International Harvester, rested on his coffin. A picture of the 140-acre family farm in western Baltimore County was placed nearby.

Les was a man of the soil, a fact his children acknowledged at his burial by placing some dirt from the family farm in his grave. "He was full of life and loved to tease customers and to teach them about how things grew," Pam said.

He had sold corn in area markets for the past 26 years. I was one of many whom Les had tutored in the fine points of corn. He taught me, for instance, to feel an ear of corn through the husk for ripeness. If it feels firm and full, then it is ready.

He taught me that corn varieties come in various degrees of sweetness, and that once an ear is picked, its sugars begin to turn to starch. He was genuine. He knew his stuff. And from his apple cheeks to his corn-tassel hair, he looked like a farmer.

Back in 1985, in what I regard as the pinnacle of my corn-eating experiences, I ate just-picked corn at his farm. Accompanied by Donna Hamilton, now an anchor at WBAL-TV, then co-host of WJZ-TV's Evening Magazine, and a film crew, I picked ears of Silver Queen from a nearby field and hustled them to a pot of water boiling on the Pahls' kitchen stove.

Pam dropped the fresh-picked corn in the boiling water for about 90 seconds then served it piping hot. It was corn nirvana, sweet without being syrupy, crunchy, a delicious testimony to what can happen when a farmer and Mother Nature are in harmony.

If you asked him, Les could also tell you about plenty of times when growing crops wasn't such a seamless pleasure. Once when a nest of snakes dropped out of a tree onto his tractor, he abandoned the wheel, letting the tractor run until it stopped and snakes vanished.

He regularly battled herds of deer that liked to make nighttime raids from the nearby Patapsco State Park into his fields. He countered by unleashing barking dogs to shoo the deer back into the park. When he learned that officials at Baltimore-Washington International Airport had gained permission to shoot deer that wandered onto the airport runways, he mused about putting in a landing strip on his farm so he, too, could reduce the expanding deer population.

In dry summers, like the one last year, he worked at night to keep the crops irrigated, especially the thirsty corn.

Mostly he was positive, beaming when something he had planted had turned out well. "The spinach is looking so good," he would say, and stuff twice as much as I wanted in a bag.

For city dwellers like me, part of the appeal of buying from farmers like Les is seeing their pride in their products. Sure it is a business, but these farmers don't merely shuffle goods from a warehouse. They plant them in the dirt, bring them to fruition and carry them to market.

Another appeal of buying from farmers like Les is that often their whole family is involved in the enterprise. Over the years, I have watched Les' family of two girls and twin boys growing up. Boys, who once were toddlers napping in the back of the truck, are now rambunctious 9-year-olds, selling strawberries one minute, scooting around the stalls of the market the next. The family has decided to keep the farm going, and to continue selling goods in area markets, Pam said.

Whenever I visit a farmers' market, I am reminded that nature has its rhythm. There is a procession of crops. The asparagus and greens and strawberries arrive early, and yield to tomatoes, corn, peaches and melons. Early indications are this year's corn crop could shape up as one of the best in recent memory.

I look forward to boiling corn, steaming it, grilling it. As I enjoy this year's corn crop, I will think of it as Mother Nature's tribute to Les Pahl, one of her best stewards, and one heck of farmer.