Moorhead’s Corn Man, Dale Ullrichs, has been selling sweet corn straight from the field south of Glyndon to local customers along the roadside for the past dozen years. Look for his trailer next to Axis Clinicals (the old Walmart) at the corner of Highway 10 and 34th Street. (Photo/Nancy Hanson)
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
Aw, shucks! The Corn Man was gone!
Moorhead residents were baffled two weeks ago when the familiar trailer of fresh-picked corn disappeared from the side of 34th Street. What had happened to the Corn Man – the retired fellow who had sold sweet corn from the same spot for the past five years?
Rumors abounded. Had the genial vendor been routed from his familiar spot as a traffic safety hazard? Had some misfortune befallen him? Had – horrors! – the whole crop failed? How could so many local families go miserably cobless at the very height of the sweet-corn season?
Relax, Moorheaders – the news is good. Dale Ullrich, aka the Corn Man, has found a new plot to park his trailer. As of last weekend, he’s back to selling the same baker’s dozen of fresh cobs for five bucks in a spot a mile or two up the road. You can find him in the northwest corn of Axis Clinicals at 34th Street and Highway 10.
“The Realtor selling the land at my old location (on 34th Street a block or so north of Interstate 94) was giving me grief,” the Glyndon man reports. “He was worried that I’d cause a traffic accident and get sued. I don’t have much, so he figured they might come after him.”
When he vanished earlier this month, it touched off a firestorm in his defense among Facebook’s “Moorhead=Fantastic” group. It also prompted invitations from several Moorhead businesses to share their parking lots. He picked the area west of Axis because of its easy access and high traffic on the road that leads to Walmart.
Ullrich and his sweet corn have been a summertime staple in the community since he started selling sweet corn here 12 years ago, first in the Bottle Barn lot and then on 34th Street. His daughter Brenda and her husband Brett Offutt grow the crop on their farm south of the Buffalo River Speedway. He’s out peddling it every day of the week unless rain has made the fields too muddy for picking. (He’ll on hiatus for the next couple days as they wait for the next field to be ready to pick, but expects to be back this weekend.)
Corn has been Dale’s passion since he retired as a crane operator from Green Masonry of Glyndon. That was over a decade ago; his last job, he said, was setting the scoreboards and the big organ that grace Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks.
It comes as no surprise that sweet corn is frequently on the dinner table at the Ullrich household. Dale’s wife prefers to shuck and boil it. He begs to differ: “You lose a lot of sugar that way.”
His recommended method is to microwave the cobs right in the shucks, three minutes for each. “Then cut them at the high hump at the bottom. Take a pot holder and squeeze them from the fuzz end. The cob pops right out without a single piece of fuzz on it.” He freezes corn the same way, first cutting off the shock and the pointy stalk end, then bagging and tossing it into the freezer. “When you take it out, give it four minutes in the microwave. Works like a charm!”