Mellow Drama: Soap Opera + Corn Belt = Hilarity

When they’re not working at AGCO’s Jackson, Minn., manufacturing plant, Ed Powers and Steve Fisher are hatching diabolical plots and dreaming of steamy love affairs with the women of Sweet Swine County. Sort of.

Powers (wearing the black shirt) and Fisher (in the Massey Ferguson hat) are cast members in “As the Corn Grows,” a soap opera spoof from Fairmont, Minnesota’s Our Story Productions. Both men, who work in AGCO’s spray application equipment division, are volunteers, as are all of the program’s actors. Powers plays the dastardly infomercial director Sergio Ferleone, while Fisher plays the not-so-worldly Earl Silo, who also appears on other “Our Story” programs.

“It’s a lot of fun,” says Powers, “but honestly I never imagined myself doing a silly soap opera.”

“My character has never been out of Sweet Swine County,” says Fisher about the fictional locale for the shows in which he and Powers appear. “He’s not really aware of what goes on elsewhere. I just hope I’m not being typecast.”

Here is a brief sample of “As the Corn Grows.” You can see more at the Our Story YouTube Channel.