The Daugherty Farm: Cornhole Edition

The first ever Daugherty cornhole tournament was this weekend, with the Tall Drink of Water and my mom on a team and my dad and I on another.

The games were tight, but ultimately my dad and I won two out of three games and a fourth just for fun. But we all threw good bags. (That's lingo I learned from the cornhole tournament story I wrote a while back.) My dad kept calling my mom Cornholio because she got the most cornholes out of everyone. And it would make her laugh and mess up her throws.

This all started because Saturday I drove home to Indiana with the Tall Drink of Water to watch an IWU baseball game with my dad. With me I had directions for how to make a cornhole set that I'd printed off the Internet.

My plan was to drop off the directions to my retired, woodworking dad and roll on outta town the next day and let him go to work. But no sooner than he'd examined the instructions did he get a gleam in his eye and say, "This is gonna be exciting!"

Ten minutes later TDW, my dad and I were all three in the front of his pick-up truck driving to the lumber yard. About two and half hours later, we were playing cornhole in the front yard under the street lamp.

Thanks to Mike Brungs of Florence for typing up the instructions and putting them on his Web site for me to Google and find. They were perfect. The only mistakes we had were mine. I thought we needed two sheets of plywood. We didn't.

And even though we had a jigsaw, a circular saw, a drill and various other tools, we didn't have a sewing machine. We went to Tractor Supply and bought a bag of whole corn to make the bags but realized sewing the bags without a sewing machine would take longer than it took to build the things. But low and behold, a Marion sporting goods store sold the bags. They also sell cornhole sets (called Bag-O there), for $130.

All told I spent about $40 on materials, with $20 of that for the store-bought bags. (Outrageous!) And I took back the extra sheet of plywood and the corn.

Of course my dad really built them, with TDW and I doing a lot of standing around and holding things. (Much like my childhood: "Here, Gina, hold this." Three hours later I'd be numb and still holding a flashlight, a piece of wood, the hood of a car, etc.)

With this set built, my dad is already imagining ways to make the legs collapsible. I imagine it won't be too long before he's tweaked the instructions to make the cornhole set lighter, slicker and more compact. Just like the fancy ones at the store.

No. 1.