In a cornfield just before dawn, the morning chill surrenders to the light. The stillness of the night gives way to chirping birds mixed with the sound of flowing irrigation water. Insects are buzzing nearby as two dozen workers with the Tuxedo Corn Company are about to begin their day harvesting corn.
Tuxedo Corn Company founder and farmer John Harold has chosen a field about three miles west of Delta, Colo., on a bluff overlooking the Gunnison River, as the site for the first day of the 2025 Olathe Sweet brand sweet corn harvest.
As Harold walks through rows of the petite corn plants he notices some ears have already been eaten by deer. He turns to find a skunk crawling through the same field looking for food. He then uses his fingers to check the length of the ear before tearing open the top of the ear to find the golden kernels his corn is famous for.
“It has to be right,” Harold said of his corn. “We don’t want to pick anything damaged or isn’t good.”
As workers climb aboard a large mechanical harvesting machine powered by a Ford F-350 truck engine, other workers begin to rip the top ears of sweet corn from the delicate corn stalks and gently toss them into metal baskets. The ears are then packaged 48 at a time, into large plastic crates which will then be iced before shipment.
Millions of ears from the Olathe and Delta countryside will now begin their journey to supermarkets across the United States. In normal years, Tuxedo Corn, the largest sweet corn producer in Colorado and one of the largest in the United States, would ship around 600,000 boxes of corn to Kroger supermarkets nationwide.
With 48 ears per box, this calculates to around 28.8 million ears of corn. Harold reports that this year, 2025, the yield will be lower than in years past with the company estimating to ship about 400,000 boxes, or 19.2 million ears of hand-picked corn, which will arrive in stores from Alaska to Virginia in the coming days and weeks.
But on this day, the first truck always heads to Denver.
