West Point, IA – The 57th annual West Point Sweet Corn Festival gets underway today. It takes the entire community to get ready for the four day event in Southeast Iowa.
What do you get when you cross 15-tons of sweet corn with more than 300 volunteers? The answer is Shuckfest.
Trucks show up, the Wednesday before the Sweet Corn Festival, and dump the corn in the parking lot at Merschman Seeds in West Point. From there, volunteers sit on make-shift benches or milk crates and start shucking corn.
Festival co-chair Lynne Lange says 15-tons of corn will not last long because the corn is offered free throughout the four-day event.
Lange says it takes about two hours to shuck all of the corn. It came from Illinois this year.
Lange says the corn will then be cooled and stored until it is cooked. A schedule of events is available here.