Iowa - Part III - Sweet Corn Festival & Open Pond

The weekend brought plenty more activity with the Fawcett family Sweet Corn Festival on Saturday, and the Open Pond party celebrating 25 years since we started construction on the dam for Cold Spring Pond. After my grandparents Floyd and Mary Helen, and my great uncle Alfred and great aunt Helen all passed away, the Fawcett family decided we needed an annual event to bring the family together, and thus the Sweet Corn Festival was born. Because when the sweet corn is plentiful, there's no better time for a party at the Pond.

Saturday morning was spent picking, husking, cooking, cutting, packing, and freezing sweet corn (though truth be told, with our kids and Steve & Becky's kids to wrangle in the morning, plus various Grady departures after the Baptism, we only made it for the tail end of the actual work, and then Owen mainly spent his time eating sweet corn). The morning work was followed by a lunch (with lots of corn on the cob of course), and an afternoon of playing and relaxing at the Pond.

Owen had an absolute blast playing with his cousins Olivia, Maura and Sam. There was plenty of playing on the beach, paddle boating, paddle boarding, baseball playing, frolicking on "Hollywood", and jumping off the dock (more on this in a later post). Owen really was thrilled to show off the Pond to his cousins, and has clearly adopted the Pond as his favorite place in the world.

That afternoon we had a special treat when Joe, Cate and Gigi arrived from St. Louis. We hadn't seen them since we dug out from the blizzard of '10, so it was great to see them in a more temperate environment. Owen and Gigi had a wonderful time playing together, and we all had a lovely dinner at the Pond (with more sweet corn of course).

After two days of big events at the Pond, we weren't quite done. August of 1985 (back when I was living in Iowa), was when the bulldozers first started work on the damn for Cold Spring Pond, and on Sunday we celebrated the Pond's 25th birthday party with an Open Pond event. The whole community was invited, and over 200 people came to tour the Pond and enjoy ice cream and cookies. The whole weekend was an exhausting whirlwind of fun, and it was nice to end it with a little ice cream.



(click here to see all the pictures)