Talbot Corn Club meets to celebrate 60th year

By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor

EASTON, Md. — Talbot County farmers and members of their families gathered on Jan. 11 in what could be a record number for the event to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the county’s nationally famed corn club.
The club’s annual dinner meeting — it is the only time this club meets during the course of any year — filled to capacity the dining hall/meeting room of the VFW Post home and filled the post home’s parking lot to capacity, mostly with pickups.
The club, which met first in 1952, a project of then county ag agent Roscoe Brown, is the oldest continuing club of its kind in the nation and will be celebrated in the program for this year’s national Commodity Classic slated for Feb. 28 to March 3 in Nashville, Tenn.
To mark the event here, current county ag agent Shannon Dill unveiled and distributed what she called a “Memory Book,” a scrapbook of sorts, tracing the history of the club in pictures and corn yield results from the past.
Thorough all of those 60 years and through the reigns of many county ag agents, “the only file left untouched and preserved has been that of the corn club,” Dill told the audience last Wednesday,
She and members of her staff gleaned those archives, and those of the club at the county library to retrieve content for the book.
“I wanted this year of the club to be special,” Dill said.
The gathering at the post home testified to her success.
The dinner count, according to the ladies of the post, was at least 105, exceeding the estimate they had received for which to prepare.
Among those joining the celebration and bringing congratulations on 60 years was Dr. Cheng-I Wei, dean of the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; Jamie Jamison, Montgomery County farmer and a former director of the National Corn Growers Association; former Talbot County ag agent Dave Almquist; and several county officials.
Dr. Robert Kratochvil, University of Maryland agronomist and crop production specialist, who analyzed the results of the 2011 corn yield contest sponsored annually by the club, called 60 years of continuous existence and performance “an amazing feat.”
The yields recorded by the club reflected the somewhat tumultuous and erratic growing season – dry and hot summer months followed by a hurricane.
The top yield was 177.32 bushels an acre.
The entry was submitted by Donald Foster of Easton and came off a field planted to DeKalb 61-69 seed on May 2 and harvested on Sept 30.
Foster bested the entries of 17 other growers, all of whom managed to harvest, although some just barely, more than 100 bushels an acre.
Elaine Altvater, the outgoing president of the club, captured second place honors with a yield of 174.86, and third place went to the Cecil H. Gannon & Sons operation with 167.98 bushels.
Notably, those top three producers and eight others in 2011 competition used a DeKalb variety.
Also notably, five of the six contestants in the youth division also planted DeKalb seed.
Topping the youth division was an entry by Samuel Harrison of 167.45 bushels an acre.
The companion Talbot Soybean Improvement Program is run in two divisions, full season and double crop.
John Swaine of Royal Oak submitted the winning full-season entry of 62.8 bushels an acre.
Jay Shortall’s double crop entry of 55.82 bushels took top honors in the double crop division.