Folks say Farmer Brown was a pretty good farmer, and like most farmers he was also a practical man. One year, he decided to plant his corn and his pumpkins in the same field. The way he saw it, he and his hardworking plow horse would have a bit less ground to plow, and the leaves on the pumpkin vines would shade out the weeds so there would be no need to hoe out the corn either.
That spring he plowed his cropland. Then he planted corn and pumpkins. Oh, good fortune was with him! The ground stayed warm. Soft spring rains came, and Farmer Brown knew corn and pumpkins were sprouting. One day, he saw tiny green shoots poking up out of the ground. He was delighted. Every few days he visited his field. Soon he noticed that all the shoots were just alike. They were all pumpkin plants, with no corn in sight. But he didn’t give up. He just figured the corn needed more time to sprout than the pumpkins. Day after day he watched. The pumpkin vines grew rapidly, but the corn never appeared. Farmer Brown considered replanting his corn. But he soon realized that if he worked through his field replanting his corn, he would trample the vines and destroy the pumpkins. So, he decided he would simply be satisfied with growing pumpkins instead of corn.
Those pumpkins grew and grew. Farmer Brown was justifiably proud of his fine crop of pumpkins. Finally harvest time came. One morning Farmer Brown hitched his plow horse to the wagon and the two of them headed out to the field to harvest the pumpkins.
By noon Farmer Brown had harvested a whole wagonload of pumpkins. When he headed to the house for dinner, he left the wagon by his corncrib. He figured after dinner he’d put his pumpkins in there. After all, he’d grown no corn and he needed a good place to store his pumpkins. But he selected one pumpkin to take up to the house so Mrs. Farmer Brown could make him a pumpkin pie for supper.
After dinner, Farmer Brown headed out to his corncrib to unload pumpkins. Mrs. Farmer Brown took out her largest kitchen knife and some old newspapers. She spread the newspapers on her kitchen table and set the pumpkin on top. Then she cut off the top of the pumpkin. But instead of slimy strings of pumpkin innards and pumpkin seeds, she discovered the pumpkin was filled with corn. Not corn on the cob, mind you, but shelled corn.
She ran for the porch, hollering, “Farmer Brown, Farmer Brown, come back up here. You are not going to believe what’s in your pumpkin!”
Don’t you know every single pumpkin from that crop contained nearly two bushels of shelled corn! It ended up being one of the best corn crops Farmer Brown had ever grown.
Mrs. Farmer Brown’s pumpkin pie won a blue ribbon at the county fair that summer. The judges declared it “pumpkin through and through with just a hint of corn.” When her friends asked her for her recipe, she told them about Farmer Brown’s corn crop, but they simply refused to believe it. They said, “If you don’t want to share your recipe, just say so. There’s no call for you to make up such a big lie.” Poor Mrs. Farmer Brown! Even now a couple of her former friends do not speak to her because they believe she lied rather than share the real secret of her prize-winning pumpkin pie.
“Farmer Brown’s Crop” is retold from “The Bushel of Corn,”1 collected by Leonard Roberts from J. B. Calton of Mary Helen, Harlan County, Kentucky. The story as collected runs three short paragraphs, as follows:
One day there was a farmer who planted his corn and pumpkins together. His pumpkins came up big and fat, but the corn never came up.
He picked the pumpkins and put them in the storehouse but the corn never came up.
One day he wanted pumpkin pie, and he cut one of the pumpkins open and there was a bushel of corn in each pumpkin.
How I moved from those three paragraphs to the story I now tell, I do not know. I do know that my audiences for this story are mostly school children who are not living on farms, and so do seem to benefit from a more detailed description of the planting and growing process. I also recall that the first time I ever mentioned “Mrs. Farmer Brown” someone laughed, so she became a keeper. In addition, from growing up on a farm, I am well aware that shelled corn would be even more valuable than corn on the cob, and would make an even more amazing lie.
The story also has two endings. Sometimes I will end it with the statement about every pumpkin containing shelled corn. Other times, when the audience seems especially interested in Mrs. Farmer Brown and time permits, I’ll add the segment about the pumpkin pie contest.