From the RAGBRAI route to your microwave: Popcorn is a northwest Iowa specialty

SCHALLER — RAGBRAI riders who look to the precise about 3 miles east of Schaller Monday may see popcorn destined for his or her microwaves.

The Register’s Annual Nice Bicycle Trip Throughout Iowa will be passing by way of northwest Iowa’s popcorn nation for the second 12 months in a row, and Dru Kenny, whose subject the riders will likely be rolling previous, hopes they will take discover.

“It looks as if in right now’s world not lots of people understand the place their meals’s coming from. With the ability to see the place it began, and on the cabinets, I feel is a fairly cool idea,” Kenny stated.

Sac County: Iowa’s popcorn nation 

About 10 farmers within the Schaller space, together with Kenny, 27, develop popcorn for Sioux Metropolis-based Jolly Time popcorn. They produce 10 to 12 million kilos annually, stated Jeff Naslund, a Jolly Time subject supervisor in Schaller, the place the corn is cleaned and processed earlier than being despatched to the corporate’s Sioux Metropolis manufacturing unit. 

Till the mid-Forties Iowa produced extra popcorn than some other state, with most manufacturing concentrated within the western a part of the state, in keeping with Purdue College. At one level a couple of dozen popcorn firms dotted northwest Iowa, Naslund stated. 

“They weren’t simply mom-and-pop retailers,” Naslund stated. “They had been 10-, 20 million pound producers.”

Droughts that devastated Iowa’s popcorn crop prompted different states to get into the sport. Lately, Nebraska Cornhuskers stay as much as their nickname by producing extra popcorn than some other state, utilizing irrigated fields. About 40% of America’s popcorn is grown there, in keeping with the Lincoln Journal-Star. 

Iowa’s rank has fallen to ninth, in keeping with the U.S. Census Bureau, and the roughly 8,000 acres of popcorn Iowa produces yearly is a microscopic sliver in comparison with the state’s 13 million-acre typical corn crop.

However its popcorn legacy endures, particularly in Sac County, lengthy the middle of Iowa’s popcorn trade. On final 12 months’s experience, RAGBRAI’s first in a single day city was the county seat, Sac Metropolis, about 20 miles southeast of Schaller. Its declare to fame: the World’s Largest Popcorn Ball, which the city has remade 4 instances over time, increasing it to maintain maintain of the title.

Residents hope the present 9,370-pound model, made in 2016, will likely be the ultimate phrase in popcorn ball supremacy. It has U.S. Structure-level safety, housed in its personal shrine within the middle of city, with bulletproof plastic home windows.

However Schaller, additionally in Sac County, is not any slouch. It declares itself “the popcorn capital of the world” and hosts the annual Schaller Pop Corn Days Pageant every July. Its avenue indicators function photographs of popcorn within the acquainted red-and-white-striped Jolly Time luggage.

Extra: Sac Metropolis nonetheless craves largest popcorn ball of all of them

RAGBRAI riders pausing there can anticipate to be offered with these luggage, full of the true factor, courtesy of the chamber of commerce. 

They usually’re in for a deal with. Popcorn grown in western Iowa is usually thought of to be of upper high quality than popcorn grown in Nebraska as a result of it pops higher and expands extra, Naslund stated. 

“That is a few of the finest,” he stated.

Popcorn is a temperamental crop

Among the popcorn RAGBRAI riders devour possible can have originated on Kenny’s farm. On a sunny June day, the plains his fields occupy — a topographical aid for RAGBRAI riders who spent the primary day of the experience laboring over the Loess Hills — seem like a portray. The inexperienced leaves of the popcorn stalks distinction with the clear blue sky. 

Stunning as it’s, popcorn is temperamental, stated Kenny and his dad, Brian. They can not use genetically modified seeds and chemical pesticides, widespread in rising typical subject corn primarily destined for ethanol and livestock feed.

Popcorn additionally wants some further room. Kenny crops about 35,000 seeds in his typical cornfields, however solely 30,000 in his popcorn fields. 

“It isn’t close to as sturdy as industrial corn,” Kenny stated, so he crops it in fastidiously spaced rows “reasonably than throwing a bunch of seed in right here and hope for the most effective.”

The soil temperature must be 10 levels greater at planting than for typical corn, so popcorn is planted later within the season. It matures across the identical time as typical corn and is harvested in late September or October.

Popcorn leaves don’t unfold out as a lot as these on typical corn, so farmers need to get between the crops and “tear out the weeds,” Kenny stated. 

“That’s one thing that we wouldn’t often need to do with regards to industrial corn,” Kenny stated. 

Kenny thrives in area of interest companies. He and his dad run a cattle breeding enterprise and lately bought their 1,600-pound bull Kenny Rogers for $135,000, a report value for any studding bull from Iowa. 

Kenny stumbled into popcorn six years in the past when he began farming throughout his senior 12 months at South Dakota State College. His aunt and uncle, who had farmed Jolly Time Popcorn for 30 years, had been retiring and Jolly Time contracts are exhausting to get, so Kenny took their contract and leased their land. 

“I used to be debating on doing it after I began as a result of I didn’t have any information of it,” he stated. “I’m glad I’ve as a result of it’s been a whole lot of enjoyable.”

As we speak, popcorn makes up 20% of the acreage he farms. 

For all its finicky nature, popcorn gives some benefits. Kenny will get the seed from Jolly Time, so he would not have to purchase and retailer it. And though yields can range, it is typically extra worthwhile than typical corn, Dru and Brian Kenny stated. Rising beneath contract additionally removes a few of the danger.

“Being distinctive units you aside from opponents,” Dru Kenny stated. “Being in Jolly Time and being within the Angus enterprise, combining the 2, makes them very enjoyable, rewarding, highly effective and distinctive to have the ability to do one thing totally different than everybody else is doing.”

From Kenny’s farm to your microwave

Dru and Brian Kenny have by no means ridden RAGBRAI, however like so many Iowans they have been a part of what has made it particular prior to now. When Brian Kenny was in his teenagers he bought lemonade to riders on RAGBRAI V in 1977.

“That was one thing,” he stated with a smile. “Each time it comes by way of our route, we come to the cities shut by.”

Dru Kenny bought candy corn at a stand his 4-H group arrange when RAGBRAI final went by way of Schaller in 2012. This 12 months he plans to observe RAGBRAI, possibly from his popcorn farm or some place else. 

“It’s sort of a enjoyable factor for small-town communities to have the ability to be part of,” he stated. “I do not forget that time there was a man in a kilt that was using a motorcycle. It was a very cool expertise. “

With the assistance of a Des Moines Register reporter and photographer June 23, Kenny named a heifer in his herd Ann, to honor the late spouse of RAGBRAI co-founder John Karras. 

He stated he hopes individuals will see and bear in mind just a bit little bit of his exhausting work as they journey from Ida Grove to Pocahontas. 

 “I hope they see that we’re doing our greatest job to place a high-quality product on individuals’s plates,” Kenny stated.

Philip Joens is on his seventeenth RAGBRAI. He has accomplished the river-to-river trek 5 instances. He covers breaking information, metropolis authorities and RAGBRAI for the Des Moines Register and may be reached at 515-443-3347 at pjoens@registermedia.com or on Twitter @Philip_Joens. 

On the experience this 12 months? E-mail, name or textual content me in case you have a narrative to share.