Corn Harvesting the Old Way

[Super-H-Mike]

It was a perfect day here in MN for picking corn, 75 and mostly sunny. It has been a great fall so far, warm and dry. I
took the day off from my regular job to get my little bit of corn harvest done. I picked 3 1/2 flare boxes full of some
of the nicest cob corn I have ever seen. We had good moisture all during the growing season here. The cobs were higher
than the tractor tire on the stalks. Big heavy cobs too. The stalks themselves were at least a foot above the top of
the tractor muffler . The corn was a little drier than ideal for my old picker so it didn't husk as well as it should ,
and it was butt shelling more than I like too , but oh well, for my purpose its fine. Funny , I used to hate unloading
wagons when I was a kid ( it was always my job ) and now I love it ! Satisfying work. My little crib is full and I
still have leftover in the wagons. Great day, no flats or mechanical trouble. I was using my 53 Super H and a IH 1PR
one row picker. Just thought some guys might enjoy the pics.

 

[rrlund]

I had a 1P and a 1PR both. It just looks odd to me now watching only one row being picked after so many years with a 2 row.

 

[jeffcat]

I can hear an old 4cyl roaring along and a bunch of chains rattling with the smell of dry corn dust and the smell of exhaust from an engine running the way it was designed to do. Love it.

 

[rrc300 u]

Looks like riding around with my uncle butch years ago but with a ford 7000 and a new idea picker. He would pick wagons full all day and I would unload at night after school. I could never quite get ahead of him as he would keep taking the empty ones and going and filling them ,.....good times wish I still did it lots of good times

 

[Super H Mike]

That is exactly right , I love the sights,sounds and smells too.

 

[Goose]

By "the old way", I thought you meant by hand.

 

[01gentdc]

me 2. we actually hand pikt some 15 acres every yr. we would toss in piles leaving as much shux as we could .then pikup later in the fall . since there were 8 kids , together we made it fun, and quik workn.. we got our 1st new idea piker about 1967,. Dad liked to use the DC Case . he just liked the hum of it and the way it handled , and he had a good quiet muffler ,. he rarely ran the motor wide open mostly around half throttle ,. like the other posters said ,about smells and sounds, I can still smell it all,and hear it all,. but my brother liked the 430 Case diesel,.. so when it was time to plant wheat and disc with the DC , the 430 stayed on the piker, it was nly a yr old and pop was piky about getting scratches on it ,,. another poster mentioned unloading wagons,. before we got a elevator...i know a couple fellas that would regularly hand shovel 10 wagon loads ear corn per day ,put some arms on a young man., and the country gals loved the all niter bull stamina we had .. LOL . sure made a feller hungry , and I slept well too..

 

[huntingreen2day2]

That is what I thought also. A team of mules. steel wheel wagon and a couple young ones running along to pick up any down rows.

 

[VicS]

Good pictures. I love this era.

 

[Super-H-Mike]

I was not born in time for hand harvesting , man that sounds like a bunch of work ! This is how it was done when I was a boy.

 

[Alan K]

There was something about hearing the ears of corn drop in an empty wagon on a crisp morning....

 

[Tree-Farmer]

(quoted from post at 03:39:36 10/20/15) By "the old way", I thought you meant by hand.

C'mon farmers, I need you to use the right term

It's called "Shucking Corn!"

My father went to Iowa to shuck corn, for quite a few years, every fall (before my time) sent part of his earnings home to help pay for the family farm, which my sister still lives on.

Now I google it and it looks like nowdays "shucking," just means to take the husk off, on your front porch.

Oh, look, there's a video of hand shucking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuDqtof2SpQ
They call it Corn Husking or Corn Picking.
But at least they’re doing it with a horse drawn wagon.
With a tall side on the far side, easier to throw the ear in.

My dad was much faster than this guy, I saw him do it some, when I was young.

Someone should make a video of an old-timer shucking corn fast.

 

[bradley martin]

There even used to be annual contests to determine the fastest "shucker". I have a book that chronicals the national contests, called "Battle of the Bangboards". (They would have a higher sideboard on 1 side of the wagon so that ears would not be thrown clear over......thus the name bangboard)

 

[Dave Salway]

You need a 2 row the temp is not even up yet . You grind for feed ?
Remember Dad and I with 2 row N I and seemed like I could rack the wagon
gear somehow that was not a good day .
Bradley can you find the name Forest Hileman in the book if I remember
right it was Iowa maybe '95 - 00 he would have been in his 90's.

 

[caterpillar guy]

When I was a kid we picked by hand then dad got a corn head for his Gleaner E 3-30 never picked by hand or otherwise since. Never had a corn picker. The corn head was bought in 1965. The combine in 1963 traded in a 66 allis.

 

[Dick2]

My job was to shovel the ear corn out of the wagons into the elevator because we didn't have hoists. My hip would get so sore by the time the corn was all picked that I could hardly walk for weeks afterwards. It was a great relief when we finally put hoists under the wagon beds.

 

[Charlie M]

I'm going to do the same thing myself, hopefully next weekend here in western NY. I've got a 1-PR picker also and will use my M on it. I've got about 3 acres to do.

 

[RLA]

In Pa. If you plan to use a Corn shell'er, then your Shelling Corn..
If your going to use a Corn Picker, picking the whole ear, then your picking corn..
Shucks?? We use that for Bedding.

 

[DoubleR]

I do the same thin only with a 323 New Idea and old 100 bu. gravity wagons. Although I don't use the Farmall C for the job. My six year old Kubota does the job allot better. It wouldn't make for a neat looking picture picking corn but it works best for me.
Nice pictures you posted. Nice looking crop too.

 

[JL Ray]

I don't want to steel your post and I am not a farmer so I don't know if this is still true, but when Dad picked corn with his two row mounted picker on the 350 IH. I can still remember the smell it created. Something all its own. Only once in 30 years have I drove by a modern picker and got a whiff of the smell. I'm assuming it the smell of hot shucks being striped off the ear. So the question I have does that distinctive smell still exist with most modern pickers?

 

[Super-H-Mike]

I know exactly what you are referring to, and I really enjoy the smell too. I thinks its a combination of the corn dust
and stalk as it is snapped, exhaust, rubber and oil , metallic smell as the rollers and sheet metal are being polished
by the crop, and the regular fall smells and crisp air...

 

[Leroy]

I did not make it to the husking-shucking contest this year, had too much going on. It had moved and I did not knoe to ware so missed a few years. I have friends that still harvest the whole farm like that. Picker is too modern.

 

[Rich'sToys]

A couple weeks ago 55 50 Ron & I were involved in picking some ear corn out at Farmamerica. We had 3 pickers going. Two of them were New Idea no. 7 one row pickers. We also had New Idea no. 300 two row. We used that till it lost a gathering chain, then used it as a 1 row for a while. We filled a small crib and had a lot of fun in the process.
My job growing up was to haul the loads of ear corn in from the field and dump them into the elevator to fill the crib. That was always my favorite part of harvest!

 

[SweetFeet]

Great photos.

Sure brings back memories... my husband filled three cribs every year right up until he quit farming about ten years ago. I'd take coffee and a snack out to him in the field with the kids in the pickup.

I don't have too many pics though - was before I had a digital camera, so just didn't take a whole lot of photos.

 

[Rich'sToys]

I was going to edit my last post and add a photo, but I guess I can't edit right now. Here it is:

 

[LonM]

As others have said, ear corn harvest has its own sights and smells that are unique. Here are a few pictures of our operation in western MN/northeast SD. The picker is a 702 New Idea UNI. We filled 4 steel cribs and made a pile on the ground.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

T-F, no kidding. That guy was painfully slow. My grandpa said the good pickers had one in the air all the time. gm

 

[formenwhogrow]

Define "modern". There hasn't been a new corn picker offered on the market for nearly 30 years.

 

[casenut1]

I have a cane from the 1936 National Husking Contest.I assume my Dad and Grandfather attended this contest.

 

[casenut1]

Dad would of been 19 years old and granddad 56.

 

[Super-H-Mike]

Looks like that Uni really launches the cobs into the wagons !

 

[sammydwm]

Just finished up this years corn. Here's how we do it.

 

[Tx.Ricefields]

Great photos.....Thanks for posting

 

[LonM]

Yeah, it does! The wagon elevator seems to be the bottleneck. If it can't take the corn away from the husking bed fast enough it will pile up in there.

 

[Paul from MI]

My cousin picked ours with an Oliver one row pull type and his Farmall 300. When I got home from school there were always 3-4 loads to shovel off, then more until chore time. By Thanksgiving I was pretty sure a #14 grain scoop just grew naturally on the end of my arm.

 

[55 50 Ron]

Thanks for the post Rich. I just have to say we found the lost gathering chain today thanks to some prayers and a very diligent young Farmamerica college student employee from Viet Nam.

 

[55 50 Ron]

Where in MN? Have you heard of Farmamerica?? There is more corn picked the old way than I would have thought. Ron

 

[oldtanker]

(quoted from post at 20:32:42 10/20/15) Where in MN? Have you heard of Farmamerica?? There is more corn picked the old way than I would have thought. Ron

A picker? We here have this thing, they call it a combine.......:lol:

Don't think that's in my area of MN. Only know one guy around here still using a picker. 2 row New Idea.

Gotta agree with stating that they haven't made a new picker in years. But I bet it's more than 30 years ago.

Rick

 

[Mike M]

You are way more advanced than what I saw this weekend. Horses pulling a binder and then shocks stood up in the field.