It's officially autumn here tomorrow and my four sisters (giant sunflowers is the fourth) are doing well, but I think you might be sensible to avoid the sisters for now: the system's really designed for growing storage crops, allowing them to mature and dry in place: winter squash, dried beans and dent/flour corn. Not very kid-friendly food! Snap beans and sweetcorn need to be harvested often and it would be hard not tho wreck the plants. Popcorn's a great kid plant. Strawberry popcorn can be eaten fresh too and it's a cool colour. Maybe they could try a modified three sisters: popcorn, sunflowers and a winter squash like 'Jack be little', that should be ready for halloween, if that's your kind of thing. Corn HAS to be planted in a block and a bonus of popcorn is it can be planted close. It needs an enormous amount of nitrogen to do well, apparently people used to bury fish carcasses under the mounds. I'm too wimpy! I grew leguminous winter cover-crops, chopped them down and smothered them with seaweed and lawn clippings, let that break down and planted the sisters. I've foliar-fed it a couple of times, chucked on more grass clippings and aged sheep poo. Not something I'd do in a large space, but the corn (Navajo black) has between 3 and 5 cobs each. It feels like the Little shop of horrors out there sometimes: "feed me, Seymour". Beans wildly clutching everything, corn in all directions, every morning I have to wrestle the pumpkins off the paths...

Update on my corn. It's Day 50 and we're about half way through and nothing has bothered my plants at all. I have been worried about the ants and the squirrels, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping we'll have some corn to eat by 4th of July! :)

Like others have said... I think it depends on what you want to do with your crop, or why. If you want to just be growing something for the sake of growing, leave the alfalfa. It's a good crop, and pretty decent for the soil. I know a couple locals that "fallow" their fields with alfalfa, sometimes with clover mixed in- I guess animals like the mix, but I haven't asked. Corn can be a serious depleater. 5 acres is too much for personal use, unless you got some of your own stock to feed, and too little for commercial use- depending on your commercial use. And you have to figure in how you will sow it, harvest, and store the stuff. That's a lot of land to tend unless you have some machinery to do it with. Or can hire workers to tend it. A potential option if you really want to do corn, depending on how isolated your field is, and how close other fields are is to ask around and find out if you could use the field for seed stock corn. Like if your field is suitable to pretty much guarantee no cross-pollination, you could find a seed bank that would want to pay you to grow a bunch of seed corn for them. It's probably a far shot though. And keep in mind you might need somewhere around 80 pounds of corn seed- an extremely rough estimate is around 2.5-3 acres per 40 pound bag according to some folks. And though alfalfa is a great nitrogen fixer, you would likely still need a serious payload of fertilizer for your field if you plant in corn. So you might need at least a few hundred bucks upfront to prep your field and seed it- vs just letting the alfalfa grow as is and paying at the end of season for mowing and bailing. But all in all, since you only have 2 months to plan and decide.. I would suggest you don't try planting corn this year. Leave the alfalfa, have it mown and bailed when the field is ripe- bails can sit in the field, I've seen it often done that way.. and give yourself more time to find your market, figure out your crop, and potentially secure the equipment and storage needed. Then if you still really want to do corn, do it spring of 2016.

projectdiy : I do every year but have to make sure soil is ready because corn is a heavy feeder. I have a large lawn and bag when I mow (I call it harvesting ) I mulch the first crop heavily with this as it grows helps with moisture and it decomposes fast also have a large compost pile and a free supply of horse and cow manure ( dried or fresh ) I also process the green corn stalks by running the through my chipper I spread this over the plot along with everything else tilling each in this takes a few days I water the area thoroughly and wait for it to dry another 2-3 days and then I plant. Wish I had enough space to do plantings every few weeks but It has worked for me , I do rotate corn to different spot year to year but once I have it in I have to reuse same spot for 2nd crop a lot of work but I enjoy it. After harvest of 2nd crop I always plant a cover crop for winter .