Corn kernels flew through the air and plastered themselves to faces and beards as corn eating competitors ran their teeth along ears of corn in a frantic three-minute race to see who could eat the most corn at Saturday’s 35th annual Shippensburg Corn Festival.
Traffic was blocked off from Prince Street to Spring Street, where vendors sold food, crafts and jewelry for the Corn Festival. The proceeds from renting the vendor spots, as well as a percentage of the vendors’ earnings, go back to the town of Shippensburg, said Debbie Weaver, president of the Shippensburg Corn Festival Committee, which organizes the event.
Shippensburg University professors and alumni were among the 12 corn eating competitors sitting at the table with elbows out as they held ears of corn to their mouths — scarcely lifting their heads for air as they skinned ears of corn like a vegetable peeler strips a potato.
2015 SU alumna Sarah Eyd attended the Corn Festival for the first time and competed in the corn eating contest, where she did not win any prizes but managed to eat four ears of corn.
First, second and third-place winners earned cash prizes of $50, $25 and $15, respectively.
“It really hurt me … I was chewing it faster than I could swallow it,” Eyd said.
Nathan Goates, a management professor at SU, was the only one who flipped his ears of corn vertically and held them stationary as he used his front teeth like a knife to scrape away the kernels.
Goates said that this was part of his technique, because he was hoping that most of the corn would fall out of his mouth and onto his lap. Despite Goates’ strategy, the only prize he earned were the three and a half ears of corn lodged in his stomach — which was no competition for the first-place winner’s nine ears of corn.
SU’s math department, however, had a third-place winner who ate seven-and-one-fourth ears of corn — a personal best for math professor Ben Galluzzo, who is a fifth-year corn eating competitor.

Playing a numbers game
Galluzzo was doing more than shoveling in corn — he and his math students were also crunching numbers to calculate the number of people crammed between the white, tent-lined street sides like mortar between brick.
The rough estimate was 34,000 to 35,000 people, but Galluzzo said he and his students are still working on a more exact figure.
For the fifth year now, Galluzzo said he stationed students at intersections along King Street so that for 60 seconds every 20 minutes they counted the number of people who crossed the street. After they compiled their data, they would use formulas to calculate an estimate of the number of people at the Corn Festival.
Last year, Galluzzo said that he and his students estimated that 28,000 people attended.
“Estimating crowds isn’t easy,” Galluzzo said.
One of Galluzzo’s students, sophomore Kaitlyn Schultz, said that this is her first year crowd counting at the Corn Festival, and she has learned techniques how to do it without tallying people twice.
“You have to think of a way to count people fast,” Schultz said.
Applied math, which is what Galluzzo and his students were doing at the festival, is a way to understand how the world works, Galluzzo said.

Nibblin’ on some corn
Corn came in many forms at the Corn Festival. Its aroma weaved through the crowds as corn fritters sizzled, kettle corn popped and butter dripped from corn on the cob.
The Shippensburg Young Farmers, a program designed to educate people about agriculture, has been at the Corn Festival for all 35 years. This year, they had 1,200 ears of corn to sell to people, said Ed Diehl, who lives a few miles south of Shippensburg and is a member of the Shippensburg Young Farmers.
With 12 people helping, it took them about two and a half hours to shuck all of the corn, Diehl said.
People lined up for the corn, which was slathered in butter and whatever seasonings people chose — salt, pepper or Old Bay seasoning.
The Corn Festival helps to show people that Shippensburg is not just a college town, Diehl said, but a farming community, too.
“[Corn Festival] brings the city and country people together,” Diehl said.
Also popping around the Corn Festival were several kettle corn vendors.
Kornucopia is owned and operated by Randy and Heidi Brubaker from Juniata County, who run their side business with their two children, who are 15 and 12.
Kornucopia has been coming to the Corn Festival for the past four years and they usually sell six to eight 50-pound bags of kettle corn, Heidi said.
“I love [the Corn Festival]. I love the crafts and the food,” Heidi said. “It keeps me hopping, though.”
Corn fritters — dough mixed with corn — were selling fast, too.
Bernadette Benbow, of Shippensburg, volunteered at the Corn Festival with her church, St. Peter’s African Methodist Evangelical Church, and flipped the round, flat fritters on the open-faced grill top. She said that corn fritters may be similar to pancakes, but are much richer.
“First year we’re going to send someone out to get more,” Benbow said. “So we did well this year.”
After the Corn Festival ended at 4 p.m., the bustling noise dissipated as people left and metal clanged as vendors took down the white tents — signaling the end of another Corn Festival.

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